In this episode, Ali talks about how to tell stories in a way that promotes growth, by challenging the ways we tell ourselves stories.

One Little Word, with Ali Edwards

Ali Edwards is an expert in that very special place where stories, images, and words about life intersect.

Read on for more on Ali’s projects and how to get involved.

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Shownotes

Today’s guest has mastered the art of finding story in the little details of everyday life and using one little word to set an intention that makes a big difference.

Ali Edwards is an expert in that very special place where stories, images, and words about life intersect.

She’s a designer, blogger, workshop instructor, and author of four books about memory-keeping.

If the name sounds familiar, maybe you follow Ali, maybe you’ve used her memory-keeping products in the past, but also she’s been on the show before.

Ali was on about a year ago; in that episode, Ali shared her wellness story, what’s worked for her over the years and what hasn’t.

It was such a great peak behind the scenes of someone who’s running an incredibly successful business, has a blended family, and is trying to balance all the things (like so many of us do), and then also fitting health into that bigger picture.

She’s incredibly honest about the challenges that she’s faced, how she’s found help with her anxiety and depression, with her philosophy on food, feeding a family of seven, her approach to movement, and finding what works for her.

It’s one of my favorite episodes to listen to and if you haven’t already, you can check it out here.

I invited Ali back because she is a storyteller.

Over the years, she’s managed to find a way to tell true life stories through her brand and business.

The central theme of the Feel Good Effect is, “what does it really mean to be healthy”; it’s one of the questions we are always asking.

And I really think that storytelling or finding meaning, putting together those little pieces of life into bigger context and broader story, is highly related to health.

It’s not something we necessarily think about right away (it’s not a green smoothie or the latest exercise trend), but I think as you listen, you’ll hear why Ali and I believe stories to be so related to well-being and health.

In this show, we talk about stories and about how you can be really active in telling your own story.

One of my favorite takeaways from this conversation something Ali said: that part of storytelling and observing is the opportunity or the act of listening to your life.

And sometimes listening requires stillness, a little bit of pause.

So many of you have told me that you want a little more pause and presence, but that you’re not sure how to do it.

This is a very active, practical way to do that, to take the pause and listen to what you hear.

My other favorite part of this conversation (that I think you’ll be able to put into action right away) is this idea of choosing one word to focus on, as an intention for the New Year.

This is such great timing for right now, but even if you’re listening in the future, you can always start this.

My guess is that you’ve heard of the idea of picking one word to focus on instead of a New Year’s resolution, but Ali adds a lot of insight on how we can actually get deeper into it, and not just abandon that word after a few days or weeks.

So, here’s what I want you to do: if you choose a word for the year, I would love for you to share it.

One of the things Ali talks about is making that word visible, and you can definitely make it visible by sharing it.

It’s so rich and there are so many takeaways on how she’s applying all of this to her life.

In case you want a quick re-cap instead, here’s an overview on how Ali got to this point, running her business, storytelling, and having a family.

Work-wise, Ali has a company that provides memory-keeping tools and products for people to do scrapbook-based storytelling.

She really focuses on encouraging people to tell the story of their lives and she wants to have products to support people in doing that.

Ali has a graphic design degree but she never anticipated that this would be her job; at one point in time she thought she would be a stay at home mom.

A big part of her story is going through a divorce in 2012 and getting remarried last year which increased the size of her family, going from two kids to five kids ranging in age from nine to 16 all in and out of the house.

One of the reasons Ali and Robyn connected was because Ali had started a wellness journey about two years ago.

After going through a couple random illnesses, she just started to focus on that a lot more and started a wellness Instagram account to document that story, because that’s how she makes sense of her life- through telling those kinds of stories.

Ali has always loved reading and loved being immersed in stories.

After college, where she earned her Bachelor’s degrees in American history and literature and government, she went back to school for her graphic design degree, and then married those two together into this idea of scrapbook storytelling after her son was born.

She found that she loved telling stories in that way- of documenting everyday life and paying more attention to how the stories of her life were evolving.

Now, 16 years later, it’s the business that she does and the way that she lives.

For Ali, documenting things, writing things down, and taking pictures of things, are a big part of the way she makes sense of what is happening in her life.

With her Instagram account, Ali notes that if she’s not posting she’s probably not taking care of herself- it’s a way to keep record for herself, as well as a way to tell that story.

We’ve boiled it down, this whole idea of wellness, to things that you can count.. If you’re tracking it you either do it or you don’t, you either succeed or you fail.

A lot of the ways that Ali has documented her life through social media she has wanted to put in a story format so that she could share the journey with people (not in the sense of being an expert, but more in the sense of inviting others to come along on her journey).

But she also wants to do it to hold herself accountable to wellness.

She likes that she can look back and compare her life to a year ago, how was she managing her time and fitting wellness in compared to right now when she feels like she’s struggling a little bit.

There’s this mixed piece related to the social media aspect of it for Ali, which is rooted in storytelling, but pressures and feeling obligated to post make it challenging sometimes.

Posting to check a box is very different than tracking to make meaning.

We love stories, we listen to stories, and we learn from stories-- how can we harness that into our lives to get more fulfillment?

When she looks back at her Instagram account, one of the things that Ali sees are the questions she asks herself about the stories she’s telling.

“What is the story I’m telling myself about the exercise that I’m doing right now?”

“What is the story I’m telling myself about yoga?”

“What is the story I’m telling myself about the food that I’m eating?”

Sometimes the stories that we’re telling ourselves aren’t really accurate, and that can be related to food, to movement, or the words that we use to describe ourselves.

For Ali, the process of writing is a big piece of how she processes things, and she’ll include these things; these are the questions she’s asking herself.

On resistance to this practice:

For Ali, asking these questions and telling the stories has always been a piece of her, but it has become clearer over time.

She picks a word to focus on each year, and one of the activities around it is the asking, “what is the story we are telling ourselves, about ourselves right now?”

As you ask the question, you start getting curious about it.

“Reality is that that story may not be true, and it might be some other reason completely why your behavior is manifesting itself in a certain way”.

For Ali, this is not science-based-- it’s more feelings-based.

It’s an opportunity to check in with yourself.

For example, it’s an opportunity to explore whether something, like yoga, is a good fit for you right now.

Maybe you’ve been telling yourself the story that it is a good fit for you, but maybe it actually isn’t.

On the other hand, for Robyn, this is science and feelings-based.

When we are presented with a task, situation, or stimuli, the neural pathways in our brain respond automatically.

And that automatic response doesn’t mean it’s the only option, it’s just the way we’ve practiced responding.

The way to change it is to become aware of the response and give yourself other options.

On rerecording to tell a new story:

This last year, one of the things Ali saw when she challenged others with this idea was that a lot of people noticing that the stories they were telling were telling themselves were really negative

Taking a step back: growing up, Ali’s dad was a hard person to live with.

Over the years, she’s had many conversations with her mom about the tapes that play in our head, and her mom has mentioned the idea of rerecording the tapes that you are telling yourself.

“If you listen to that voice inside your head, what is that voice telling you? Whether it’s telling you negative things, things about your self-worth, or… negative things [others have] said… how could you rerecord the tapes that you're hearing in your head?”

And that stuck with Ali in terms of pausing to recognize what the tapes are, which are repeating in her head.

Rerecording those tapes is the same idea as checking in with yourself, because it’s possible that you need to tell yourself a new story.

The idea behind Ali’s One Little Word class is to provide simple, creative prompts to just get people thinking; she’s not providing a solution.

Asking these questions can be hard and scary because a lot of people do tell themselves negative stories that are getting repeated over and over again.

Once you give yourself the space to actually listen to the stories and evaluate, “is this true”, then you can start telling yourself a new story or you can be rerecording a new tape about who you really are or what you really want to do

“The things that are challenging to us can also be the most beautiful parts of our story”.

For Robyn, the struggle comes from being raised by a dad who was a professor, and having gone into academics as well.

When you’re writing professionally, especially in the research world, you don’t tell a story or fluff it up-- you get to the point and get out of there.

If you’re going on and on in the scientific, quantitative world, that’s not real.

It’s only real if you can quantify it, which is part of her bias.

But also in Robyn’s family, growing up, if you couldn’t get to the point fast enough you’d get shouted down.

And for Ali, that says a lot about how the word “story” can be viewed.

In this case, “story” can be interpreted as meandering and fluffy, versus Ali’s experience, in that a story is what’s real.

“Story is what’s real. Story is what you see in front of you right now. Story is what’s happening to you and the way you’re responding to things”.

And over the years, Ali has learned that stories come in so many different formats.

Sometimes, she tells stories that are just a list of things; story can be a list of five things you love about your life right now.

Letting go of thinking it has to look a certain way, that it has to have a beginning, middle and end, or it has to sound a certain way.

A lot of people get stuck in this writing, related to memory-keeping, thinking that it has to fit within a certain structure.

We have a lot of rules in our minds that get us stuck: you have to be a good writer, a good photographer, you have to know how it ends, or what the greater meaning behind it is.

And not all stories are even ready to be told at any given time.

For Ali, some of the harder stories need time for her to process a little before she’s ready to tell it.

On storytelling + how to get into these practices:

First, notice. Pay attention.

If you’ve seen Jerry Seinfeld's, Comedians Getting Coffee in Cars, you’ve probably heard a little about the comedic process, part of which is noticing the things that are so part of life that they become invisible.

By pointing them out, it becomes funny.

Ali talks about the little stories that are present in her home, and paying attention to those.

Like when there are no kids at home, and she notices that even the laundry room is clean (which never happens with five kids!)-- that’s a story she tells.

A lot of the ideas from positive psychology and neuroplasticity (changing your brain to be more resilient, be more optimistic, have more well-being), are around rewiring your brain to see gratitude in your everyday life.

Our brains are wired to see threats, the opposite of what’s good, and the way to change our brain is to start noticing those things.

But for Robyn, the tactics often given for gratitude, like keeping a journal, are centered around trying noticing things.

But this storytelling lens feels so much more natural and organic.

By practicing through scrapbook or storytelling, you’re able to see those stories in a more natural light.

This just gives it more format and structure.

Another one of these practices that Ali does, about three or four times a year, is called “Day in the Life”.

For this, she encourages people to take pictures, for example, every hour of whatever it is that they’re doing.

With her current take, she’s doing this practice through the lens of gratitude.

Throughout the course of her day, she’s identifying and documenting 10 things that she’s grateful for on Instagram.

“It’s the practice of looking for the things that are good, looking for the things that you’re thankful for, even the very basic things”

Listen now!

Guest Info

Ali Edwards' passion resides in that very special place where the stories and images of life intersect.

Designer, blogger, workshop instructor, and author of four books about memory keeping, Ali is well known for authentically capturing everyday life with photos and words and creating memory keeping projects from those moments that pass by in an instant.

Guided by simple principles such as not making things more complicated than they need to be, focusing on the things that matter most and embracing imperfection, Ali Edwards is proud to be a work in progress.

She believes without a doubt that there's no right or wrong way to do all this, that the real stories are worth telling, and there's a whole lot of celebrating to do even in the midst of the challenging pieces of life.

Since 2004, Ali Edwards blog, workshops and memory keeping projects have inspired tens of thousands of people to share their own stories and enrich their own lives through the process.

Ali lives in Eugene, Oregon with her two children and their cat George Washington.

3 More Feel Good Effects You’ll Love

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Today we are talking with New York Times bestselling author and beloved food blogger, Danielle Walker about her latest book and eating what you love.

Food, Hope & Eating What You Love, with Danielle Walker

Listen for more on the process of creating recipes and cookbooks that people can trust, the challenges of being in the public light, and Danielle’s movement away from the Against All Grain brand and more towards herself.

We are going to talk all about the book, process, and story behind it in this interview.

She’s also the voice behind one of the most popular, grain-free, paleo blogs, Against All Grain.

Danielle’s story starts with an autoimmune disease diagnosis, suffering for many years, feeling like it was incurable, and then finding health through dietary changes.

On Danielle’s diagnosis and journey:

Danielle has such an amazing body of work and an incredible story.

Going back to around 2007, shortly after she got married, something happened that changed the trajectory of her life.

Danielle was newly married and had just graduated from college when she started having digestive problems that seemed to have appeared overnight.

Originally she chalked it up to wedding jitters and stress related to graduating, but when it didn’t get better after a couple of months, she ended up in the ER.

After seeing a handful of specialists in the San Francisco area, she was ultimately diagnosed with an autoimmune disease called Ulcerative Colitis.

That was what really changed her life and set her path for the last 11 years.

Her doctors told her that while this disease is incurable and lifelong, there are medications that would help her live a normal, healthy life.

However, she didn’t have any resources, knowledge of medication side effects, or even know what this disease would look like for her.

Nor was it mentioned that Ulcerative Colitis was an autoimmune disease; Danielle had no idea that her immune system was wrongly attacking her body.

Over the last 11 years, so much more research has come about and, with the help of a growing social media presence, the autoimmune community has come together more.

At that time, a lot of what Danielle learned came from medical chat boards, where people shared their experiences with autoimmune diseases and provided resources, which lead her to more reputable sources as well.

Now, there are a lot of doctors starting to look into diet and lifestyle changes as treatment options, but Danielle believes that when she was first diagnosed, that just hadn’t become a popular idea yet.

When you’re ill, you’re not always in the position to be your own advocate, but somehow Danielle navigated it for years.

It was very isolating; she tried to find as many resources as she could and connect with people.

Danielle started finding some information online about how diet might be able to help.

She had asked the doctors when she was first diagnosed if there was anything she could do dietary-wise, if there was something she was deficient in, or if there was something she was eating too much of that might be causing this.

But each doctor she saw was confident that diet doesn’t help, cause, or cure it.

It started just as a question without anything to back it, but after seeing some people on the chat boards say they were trying different diets, she started to look into it more.

It was a slow transition; she first went gluten-free, and then cut out anything that was white (like white sugar, white rice and white flour, those things that just felt overly processed)

She also went through a whole grain phase and then ended up following something called the Specific Carbohydrate Diet (SCD), which is similar to GAPS (Gut and Psychology Syndrome- a diet focusing on removing hard to digest foods).

SCD was specifically written for Crohn's, Colitis, Celiac, and Autism, and it felt like it was the most direct for what she was dealing with.

After doing it for a while, she saw improvement- just not at the level that she had hoped to find.

Danielle realized that the basis of it was anti-inflammatory, focusing on healing your gut, and that it was actually beneficial for lots for diseases.

She saw enough improvement to get pregnant with her son, but she didn’t stick to the diet very strictly and once her son was about nine months old, there was another flare up of her symptoms.

She has continued to have ups and downs over the last 11 years (thankfully more ups than downs!).

In her books, Danielle shares photos of herself during these downs.

They powerfully show how hard it is to have a child who is completely dependent on you, but not be able to care for them in the way that you want.

On her turning point:

That was her turning point: when she didn’t commit 100% and her symptoms flared up with a nine month old son, it just got so bad and so much more real when she had another life depending on her.

After that, she really committed.

She was in the hospital for a few weeks and her son wasn’t able to come in and see her.

Even after that, she was bedridden at home for three months following.

And she really didn’t know where she was going from there, if it was going to go away, or she would get through it, or end up back in the hospital.

Her doctors had been talking to her about the possibility of surgery or infusion treatments every six weeks, but she had been putting it off until it became a necessary step in order to be present and care for her child.

So she was ready and registered for this infusion treatment, but then learned it was a treatment she wouldn’t be able to go off of at any time, even to have another child.

At that point, she and her husband decided to give diet another try.

They'd seen it have some effect on her, but if she really really stuck to it, what would that do?

While it seemed scary, it was just food.

Worst case scenario: she’d try it for 30 days and if it wasn’t enough, that’s when she’d try the recommended medicine.

So although she didn’t know where she was going, and did have to get a life-saving blood transfusion, she refused steroid treatment during that hospital stay.

As soon as she had the strength to get in the car and drive, she started working with a naturopath, did an elimination diet and that was another big turning point for her.

After cutting out all those things and really sticking to it, even after 48 hours Danielle saw a huge improvement in her symptoms

“Food is powerful but when I say ‘it’s just food’ I’m just saying it’s just food with no extra cost or no side effects… it’s simple”

And it’s not creating permanent damage to her body like other treatments, surgery and steroids, would.

What she was eating was food in its simplest form, unprocessed, unchanged.

On recipe development:

Before Danielle had her son, she had started playing around with recipes, and actually started a blog, which was just dormant for about a year after that.

Once she got the strength back was when she got back into the kitchen.

“I always had this fear that I wouldn't ever be able to enjoy food again”.

In college she started getting into food and loved the aspect of trying different cuisines, watching the food network, but that point after being sick and getting better was when she got really excited.

Initially, recipe developing came out of a place of necessity; there wasn’t a lot out there and she didn’t love the recipes that had been shared.

It came from wanting to enjoy her son’s childhood and be able to do some of the things she remembers doing with her mom and grandma- simple things like being able to bake cookies on the weekend.

And wanting him to be able to enjoy these things and eat in a similar way as her.

It started just as trial and error testing different recipes, family recipes or favorites from her Ina Garten cookbooks.

She would write down the recipes and then figure out what the best substitute would be for the ingredients she couldn’t have.

There were a lot of flops at the beginning, but over time she started to really learn the ingredients and what amounts she could substitute in here and there.

“It was kind of like a science lab in my kitchen for a while”

It was a lot of trial and error and a lot of fun.

She likes to say that she was the first to start combining flours in the grain-free world.

She took a tip from gluten-free recipes out there, which often use gluten-free flour blends, combining a handful of different things like rice flour, starches, and xanthan gum, because they all have different properties.

A lot of Danielle’s early recipes were solely almond flour.

They were fine, but she found when she combined it with coconut flour, it supplemented where almond flour wasn’t enough (adding coconut flour helped absorb the excess moisture and hold up a recipe in the middle).

With food, people might not recognize how innovative it can actually be and how much work goes into recipe creation.

On how her process has evolved:

With multiple cookbooks and thousands of recipes by now, it’s gotten a lot easier.

With so many recipes developed now, Danielle can go back to a favorite cookie recipe, for example, and make some changes for a totally new recipe; she doesn’t have nearly as many failures anymore, unless she’s trying something completely new.

Where it used to take her about 20 tries to get a new recipe developed, she is familiar enough with the ingredients now that she can get in and get a recipe nearly ready in half a dozen tries.

Each recipe still goes through two or three testings by Danielle and her team and at least one by an outside person before she shares it with the world.

It’s a process similar to Ina Garten’s cookbooks, where we see familiar dishes and comfort foods that we want to eat, but she’s a scientist and each of her recipes go through a process of testing.

There’s pressure, now, to get content out on the internet, which makes it really hard to test something more than once.

But Danielle knows that people are trusting her and buying the ingredients, and that’s important to her.

Ina goes even further: after she creates a recipe, she sits at her counter and watches somebody make it silently, without giving any tips, to see exactly how they’re going to read the recipe.

Afterwards, she’ll go back to her recipe and notice where wording needs to be changed to help convey her ideas to people reading her recipes.

Danielle keeps that idea in mind when developing recipes so that her readers can trust, when buying her books, there aren’t going to be a dozen recipes that flop.

“People have the trust that you’re giving them something they can use, and that is going to work, and it’s going to turn out for them”.

Cookbooks are actually the only type of book that are doing better than the e-book version still; they’re beautiful, people like to have them out in front of them on the counter, there’s something nostalgic about flipping through a cookbook, and the screen doesn’t turn off when you’re hands are dirty.

Robyn loves her cookbooks, too.

The ones that she keeps, her most treasured ones, she writes in and they have stories about what she ate, what she liked about them, and what she changed.

Being able to combine really beautiful, incredibly delicious recipes with a person and their story is something that cooking magazines simply don’t have, but that brands like Danielle’s does.

On deciding what to share in the public light:

It’s a constant process, but the first thing Danielle asks herself is usually: “will sharing this hurt me or make things worse?” and “will it help people?”

If there is a glimmer of hope that sharing something personal could help or speak to a few people, then she usually shares it (with filters to maintain some privacy).

What she shares might be personal but not necessarily intimate.

“There’s a difference between being vulnerable and putting things out there into the world and trying to help people, and also saving some of those more intimate moments for yourself”.

She also tries to share things in a way that aren’t going to invite a lot of opinion.

Sometimes, though, she’ll fall into the trap on instagram stories where people don’t always realize that she’s tried everything under the sun before she shares, and that’s when she gets a lot of feedback from people who don’t know the history behind the story, though they mean well.

Danielle shares personal aspects of her life that aren’t necessarily ending, in ways that help provide support of other people, like her journey with her disease and the loss of a pregnancy.

It’s easy to say “this happened and it’s over”, but she’s very real and shares her ongoing struggles, although she feels like she may be letting some people down.

“Is there something I can share that can help people… [through what] I’ve learned through my suffering and my experience that can roll off onto somebody else and potentially change their path?”

The difference between this book and Danielle’s previous books has been a long in place strategy.

When she first started her blog, Against All Grain, Danielle loved the name because it was the diet she lived by, cutting out all grains, and she was going against the grain in what she was doing in the way she was eating and handling her medical condition.

The brand has since grown to recipes beyond grain-free, an inspirational platform, and lifestyle resource in how she lives and parents.

“It’s been a long term plan to eventually drop the Against All Grain brand and just move towards myself”.

The book is the first part of this transition, although there are a lot of moving pieces.

Her Instagram handle recently changed to @daniellewalker, her site will change shortly to daniellewalker.com; all in moving away from being the Against All Grain girl to Danielle.

A lot of what she’s done in her career has been step by step and opening doors as they came.

But a lot of it was also calculated from watching people that have gone before her in the non-niche, bigger brands, and watching their progression to see how they’re evolved their brand to be more about them, their personality, and what they have to offer as a person.

After writing her first couple of cookbooks, Danielle was getting feedback from readers that they didn’t all eat grain-free all the time.

She didn’t want to detour people who weren’t against all grain from using these recipes

“They’re just quality recipes that I think anyone can enjoy regardless of their diet”

She wants everyone to enjoy these recipes without the brand name steering people away because it may not fit in what they do diet-wise.

On food + hope:

Looking back, Danielle feels that her work has been about both food and hope.

The reason she wrote Celebrations and Eat What You Love is because there are so many memories tied to food from growing up and being with family.

Food is at the center of a lot of these memories for a lot of people.

For Danielle, when she thought that she couldn’t ever have those foods again, she started to lose hope that she would be able to have those memories still or those connections that she has over the table or around food.

“I think creating those recipes offers hope to people and… sharing my story about my journey can also offer hope”.

Eat What You Love went on shelves nationwide December 4th, 2018 so media interviews and book tours are in Danielle’s immediate future.

It’s not your standard book tour, though- Danielle wanted this to be an experience for people, combining a party, cooking demo, and book tour all in one.

She’ll be visiting 13 cities across the country (see if she’ll be in a city near you, here!)

She’s sold out in half of the cities, but some tickets are still available on her website.

“My definition [on what it means to be healthy] is ever evolving as I continue to learn, but I think it’s just so many different facets.

Mental health is huge… self-care, eating, nourishing your body in the best way that your body responds to… having healthy boundaries in relationships.

I look at it kind of like a spiderweb: there are so many different threads that create a healthy person”

Guest Bio

Danielle Walker is the beloved author of three New York Times best-selling cookbooks--Against All Grain, Meals Made Simple, and Celebrations--and the voice behind one of the most popular grain-free blogs on the Internet, againstallgrain.com. After being diagnosed with an autoimmune disease and suffering for many years, Danielle found health through dietary changes. She has become a beacon of hope in the autoimmune world, and has been a leader in the Paleo and gluten-free movement for nearly 10 years. Danielle has appeared on the TODAY Show, The Doctors, Fox News, Access Hollywood, Home&Family, and many other syndicated shows, Her work has been featured in People, O Magazine, USA Today, Shape, Women's Health, Parents, Fitness, and more. She is also a frequent contributor to Today.com.

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Have you ever stared at that never ending to do list and felt completely overwhelmed, not knowing what to prioritize or where to start?

If so, this episode is for you.

How to Prioritize When Everything's Important

This episode of the Feel Good Effect is all about how to prioritize when everything seems important and how to pull meaning out of all the noise.

I’m going to share a simple strategy that will help you find Purpose and Process in your to-do list.

Read on to learn more, or scroll to the bottom to listen to the show here or on Apple Podcasts.

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Shownotes

This episode is about how to prioritize when everything seems important.

In this episode, I’m going to share one simple strategy that will change how you prioritize forever.

I’ve created a cheatsheet (that you can download here) with this simple strategy laid out for you so that you can come back to it again and again after you’ve listened to this episode.

On making a meaningful story:

In my spare time lately, I've become absolutely obsessed with storytelling, nerding out on how to be a better storyteller and the role that stories play in our lives.

And of course I've been spending time listening to and really diving into the work of Ira Glass (if you don’t know who he is, Ira Glass is the longtime producer of This American Life, which is one of the quintessential narrative, journalistic podcasts on NPR)

If you haven't heard This American Life, it’s a one hour show that really dives into one theme, telling three to four different stories that end up linking back to this theme.

For these stories, they go talk to people and then condense all of the interviews down into short stories that fit into one hour.

Every time I listen to the show I am blown away by, not just the stories themselves, but how they tie into a single theme, get you to think and feel, and just have this power, meaning and, intention.

And I just became so curious to better understand how they make this show.

It seems so effortless and it seems to go together so seamlessly, but I think we all know that when something seems effortless, there's a lot of intention and work that actually goes into it.

So, I’ve downloaded every interview podcast with Ira Glass, I bought a couple of books, and I just went really deep into how they make the show.

And something that may surprise you if you aren’t a behind the scenes producer of media content, is just how many hours and hours of footage they collect that ends up making one very short story.

They have an idea for a show and a story they want to tell, so they go out into the field and they do hours and hours of interviews, it could be over 20 hours of interviews, and then they come back to the studio and start to piece together the show.

And that means editing; it means taking all of this seemingly important information and distilling it down to a story that has meaning.

And this active distilling down, of finding the essence, of drawing meaning out of all of this noise, really makes the show what it is.

If they decided that all of it was important and it all needed to be included to provide as much information as possible, their radio show would end up being 20-30 hours long and you'd miss what was really important because you were distracted by all the noise.

It's a painstaking process, going through, editing, pulling out the essential, and pulling out what really has purpose.

It takes effort and it takes intention, but the final product is so meaningful and so much better.

At the same time, I’ve been thinking about storytelling, editing, how to focus, and how to tell the most important information (or distill out the most important information).

I’ve been having this ongoing wrestling match with my do-to list, and let me tell you, I love a good do-to list.

I will sometimes add things to my to-do list, just so that I can cross them off.

(Especially on a day when I’m having trouble getting going, there is that satisfaction of checking a box or marking something off, feeling a little bit of momentum).

But what I was finding is that my to-do list was crippling me because I never got anywhere near through it.

I would start the day with a very ambitious list, which would include not just the things that I needed to do for work, but also the things that I needed to do to take care of myself, my wellbeing, my health, and my family.

We talked about those three m’s (meals, mind, movement) and with it all, it just go so out of control and overwhelming

The interesting thing about creating this very ambitious, well-intentioned to-do list, is that they all matter, but by creating this sense of never-ending, I wasn’t doing anything.

I was getting paralyzed by feeling overwhelmed and not knowing where to start.

Often, I would look back at the day and just feel no sense of satisfaction and like I hadn’t made any progress, and it was frustrating.

What was worse was that at the end of the week, I’d look back and think: Was that really where I wanted to spend my time? Is that what I feel is important in my life? Is that the kind of life I want to create?

And often the answer was no, because I could look at places where I was spending time where it really wasn’t that important, even though it had felt important at the time.

So, as I obsess about storytelling, productivity, and ways to make it more meaningful, I had this aha-moment thinking about the editing of that show- how they took 20 hours of information that was probably interesting and important and pulled out the essential parts to make something with real meaning and real impact.

I felt like I could probably do that with my to-do list as well.

All of the things seem important, and on their own they probably are, but I am certain there are some that have more meaning, that are more purposeful, and that ultimately get me where I want to go more than others.

I realized that there had to be a better way.

On refining my to-do list:

So I took some time out to ask: How do we come up with a way to decide what actually matters? How do we come up a way to prioritize, when everything seems so important?

So I went back to this tool that I’ve used in the past, called the Eisenhower Decision Matrix, which sounds far more complicated than it actually is, based on this quote from President Eisenhower:

“What is important is seldom urgent, and what is urgent is seldom important” - D. Eisenhower

Imagine a box with four smaller boxes inside: along the top is “Urgent” and “Not Urgent”, and along the side is “Important” and “Not Important”; that’s the Eisenhower Decision Matrix.

Ultimately, it helps you prioritize.

You want to focus on things that are Urgent + Important, or maybe Important + Not Urgent, but certainly not Not-Urgent + Not Important.

This matrix has been around for a long time, a lot of people use it.

And I think it’s helpful, but when I came back to it I felt like something was really missing.

Especially when we come back to this idea of being an editor of your life, of finding the story that really matters.

I think Urgent and Important have a lot to do with efficiency and productivity in the traditional sense, but I feel like it’s really missing that purpose, meaning, and intention in the way that you want to craft your life and focus on what really matters to you.

So I came up with our own matrix.

(I don’t even have a title for it yet so maybe you guys can help me name this).

However, it’s less about the name here, and more about how you can use it to decide to prioritize, to take that never ending to-do list of everything that seems important and pick out the few things that really matter to focus on, and to build a life filled with meaning.

So, again, imagine a box divided into four smaller boxes, and on one side is “Purpose” and “Without Purpose”, and along the top is “Process” and “Without Process”.

This magic little box is going to be your best friend to help you refine that to-do list, pull out the things that are actually important so that you can let go of or edit out what isn’t.

Grab the cheat sheet here.

On the matrix:

Purpose

Let’s start with Purpose, and what does that actually mean.

When you look at all the things you do in a day, you can ask yourself this simple question: does this have purpose? (to break it down further: does this have intention behind it, meaning there’s a reason that you’re doing it?)

And you might say, well of course, there’s a reason for everything I do, but really unpack that, is there really?

And the second question to ask: is this meaningful? (does it have significance to you?)

And that’s Purpose- if it’s intentional, meaning there is a reason that you’re doing it, and if it’s meaningful, meaning it has significance to you.

On the flip side, is Without Purpose, which is non-intentional, meaning that there is no clear reason to do it and not meaningful or significant to you.

Process

And on the other side is Process.

“Process is really about creating a path or a daily practice toward where you want to be”.

If you have a goal, if you have intention, if there is some significance, Process has to do with helping you get there.

It’s doing a little something everyday, getting out of all-or-nothing, and really focusing on the daily practice of whatever it is that you're trying to do.

Something with Process is something helping you create a path toward where you want to be, maybe that’s a goal, or a way you want to feel, or the life you want to create.

And also its aligned with a daily practice- something that you’re able to do more than you’re not.

Without Process, on the other hand, leads nowhere.

Again, you might think, well nothing on my list leads nowhere, but there probably are so many things and so many ways that you spend time that aren’t leading anywhere.

And that can be fine, we all have ways that we want to decompress, but there are probably also things on that list that aren’t leading anywhere or that are all-or-nothing, something that you’re going big on that you know you can’t sustain or keep the momentum going.

You can use this matrix to run your own editing process

Using the Purpose + Process Matrix:

One of the questions I get a lot from clients, Feel Good Effect listeners, and the Real Food Whole Life community, is: how do I prioritize the three m’s, meals, movement and mind, when there are not enough hours in the day to do it all?

I know how important they all are, I know how important eating well is and how important moving my body is and maybe meditating or journaling, but when I look at my schedule, I know it is not realistic to do all of the things all of the time.

The big takeaway message here it that regardless of how you fill out the matrix, you can have more by doing less.

Truly, you can manage and balance the three m’s and have a well life without doing all the things all the time.

Let’s say that’s your struggle right now: you want to focus on your mind, and add movement, and focus on meals, but you already feel so overextended.

Let’s start with Purpose questions.

Let’s say you want to add meditation into your schedule- I’d start by asking Purpose questions: Whats the intention? What do you want to get out of meditating?

My guess is that it’s not really about the habit, it’s about what you hope to get out of it.

Maybe you hope to feel calmer or more focused

And even further: What's the meaning? Why is that significant to you?

“There’s always a why behind the why”

Maybe the significance of feeling calmer or more focused is so that you can be more present with your friends and family, or have a better sense of well being

And then let’s talk about Process.

Often times, we are able to identify meaning and intention, but when it comes to Process and what we're going to do everyday, things kind of fall apart.

We lose sight of how that is even going to happen.

So first, I like to think of the Purpose box, the intention behind the “what” and the intention behind the “why”.

And when we come to Process, which is really the intention behind the “how”: How is this even going to happen?

Going back to the meditation example: Do you have any kind of process? Do you have a way that you’re going to be able to do this more days than not? Will that really lead you to where you want to be?

I think there is a lot of talk about adding intention to our lives, which is great, but I think where we miss the boat sometimes is forgetting to talk about this idea of Process.

“We can have great intention.. But if we don’t have a way to get from where we are to where we want to be in a realistic way, then we know things kind of fall apart”

This is a time to be really honest with yourself about what you can do in this season of your life.

Am I approaching this by being incremental and making small baby steps or am I approaching this with all-or-nothing?

This is where we get tripped up so often.

The pull toward all-or-nothing is so strong, it’s the way our brains are wired and the messages we get from media underlying our culture.

We make up these rules that don't exist, but we tell ourselves it has to be.

This is where the “should’s” show up, where perfectionism shows up, where comparison happens, where we say it has to look a certain way or it doesn't count.

So for you, you may think meditation has to happen every day and it has to be 20 minutes.

If that consistently is not happening but it keeps showing up on your list, you know that you have purpose there but you don't have process.

And if you want your goal to show up in the Purpose + Process box, and that’s the box you’re going to prioritize, how do you tweak that process so it actually fits in your life?

How do you let go of perfectionism, all-or-nothing, and comparison, and say: What does this look like for me in my real life right now? How can I do this more days than I don’t without completely overwhelming myself?

You keep asking yourself these questions until you move your goal out of Without Process, into Process, and you end up with something that is meaningful, intentional and that can actually happen in your life.

And we can do that with all the things.

If meal planning is on your list of to-dos but it seems to not happen or it’s completely overwhelming you, then you go back to those questions of purpose: Why does this matter? Why is this significant to me?

If you can find some really good meaning there, some intention, then absolutely it goes in the Purpose box.

But then let’s move over to process.

Do you have expectations that maybe aren’t totally realistic right now, or you just haven’t found a system or a process that works for you?

The fun thing is that you can workshop these boxes.

I would start by workshopping your Purpose + Without Process box; anything with Purpose + Process I’m guessing you’re already doing, but you can definitely start there too .

If you have crossover with Purpose + Process, then that’s what you should prioritize.

Instead of trying to do 90 things in a day, try to focus on three things with Purpose + Process, just three.

And when those get done, you can kind of pick up some of the other things that have been left off.

“You don’t have to do everything, because the things that you’re doing are going to matter, they’re going to have meaning, and they’re going to move you to where you want to go”.

And if there are items on your to-do list that you feel are important but haven’t made their way into the Purpose + Process box, then start workshopping that.

If it’s Purpose + Without Process, how do you break it down, take more baby steps, make it more incremental, make it smaller so that you’re actually able to do it on a regular basis?

Here’s the thing, this takes a little work, practice, and coming back again and again.

The more I’ve used this, the more it’s changed, not only how I feel at the end of my to-do list, but at the end of my day, the end of my week, and has just brought me clarity and focus.

And it’s not perfect, there are still days where I find myself adding more and more to my list, but I just have to come back and really ask those questions.

“If I do the things that matter, the things that have process, I can have more by doing less”

We’re going into December, where lists can get really long, so this is the perfect opportunity to practice.

As we go into January, this will be a great jumping off point.

Grab the cheat sheet to practice, and share with me how you’re taking this information and putting it into your lives.

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How to Design Gatherings That Matter, with Priya Parker

In this episode, Priya talks about the idea of code switching, what that does at an individual level and how it led her to group conflict resolution, and about how we can host or guest gatherings in ways that foster self-care with some tactical tips and questions to reflect on.

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Shownotes

Today we are talking about how to design gatherings that matter.

We all attend and host gatherings all the time, whether it's a work meeting, or hosting a holiday, or just attending a get-together, a shower, or a wedding.

And this one is all about how to infuse intention and connection into those gathering opportunities.

On our guest, Priya Parker:

I’m so glad you’re here for this conversation with Priya Parker all about how to design gatherings that matter.

Priya is a master-facilitator and the founder of Thrive Labs where she helps activists, elected officials, corporate executives, educators and philanthropists create transformative gatherings.

She’s trained in the field of conflict resolution and has worked on race relations on American college campuses and on peace processes in the Arab world, southern Africa, and India.

She studied organizational design at M.I.T., public policy at Harvard Kennedy School, and political and social thought at the University of Virginia (she’s legit).

She’s also the author of The Art of Gathering: How We Meet and Why it Matters, which is what we’re really going to dive into today.

I love this conversation because it helps reframe the idea of gatherings or celebrations or parties and gives us some tactical ways to make them more intentional, more meaningful, and more connected.

Priya also shares a really good idea with us during this episode, and it’s something I want to invite you to be a part of.

If you tuned in last week, you know we talked about how to avoid the holiday spiral, and I encouraged you to cultivate and intentional season instead.

Being really intentional and incremental about these last 50-some days in the year so that when you go into January you’re not starting from scratch and you have some grounding and momentum going into the new year.

In this interview, you’ll hear me talk about this idea of the holiday spiral, and Priya then came up with this idea of the spiral supper.

I love this idea and I want to do it for myself, but more importantly I want to invite you do it together with me as a community.

If you’re listening in real time, this is how it's going to go down:

This Saturday, November 17th, we will host a virtual spiral supper.

You can participate anywhere you are in the world; you can participate alone or with friends or family.

It’s going to be a virtual community event we can all do together on the same day and we will keep it very simple but very intentional.

First, pick a meal.

This can be something you cook that means something to you, something you cook with someone you love, or it can be takeout from a favorite restaurant- it's not so much what, but why.

The second part is to actively set an intention for the remainder of 2018.

And that can be a big intention, but I really think the more specific and incremental it is, the more likely it is that you’ll be able to stick with it.

Maybe your intention is to be more real, or to connect in a more meaningful way, or to be more present, or to create more white space and more pause.

Whatever your intention is, I want you to write it down, speak it out loud, and share it with as many people as you can.

I’ll send reminder details on the Real Food Whole Life newsletter- if you’re not on there, that’s where I share behind the scenes and insider information (you can jump on that at here).

Priya was born in Zimbabwe, coming from a mixed family with an Indian mother and a White-American father.

For the first four or five years of her life, they moved about every six months or a year to different fishing villages because of their work- her mother is an anthropologist and her father a hydrologist.

For about 10 or 13 years they were each other’s source of adventure.

They moved back to the U.S. and within a year they divorced, and within two years they had both remarried other people that broadly reflected the worldview from which each of them came.

Priya’s parents had joint custody, so every two weeks she would go back and forth between her mother’s house, which became an Indian-British, global, vegetarian, new-age, Buddhist/Atheist/Agnostic, higher-income family, and her father’s house only a mile away, which was a White, American, evangelical Christian, conservative, meat eating, multiple dogs, multiple kids, family.

And she was fully a part of both families.

So from very early days, she's been interested in when and why people come together, and when and why people come apart.

She wrote this book, in part, because in modern life the ways in which we come together and who we come together with has gone into autopilot, which no longer serves us.

She wrote a book that looks at gathering, not from the perspective of the food that you cook or the way you set the table, but really how we create gatherings in all types of contexts that meaningfully connect people.

It’s about how to learn to create experiences that are remembered long after they're over, for the things that they make you think about, things they made you feel, the way you were able to connect with someone in ways that perhaps surprised you.

On being together or apart as one person:

While there may not be anyone else out there with this exact story, Priya’s story can reflect the idea of going between two worlds or having different sides to yourself, which many people can relate to.

She is a stand in for a more extreme version of what we all carry.

Whether it be having Thanksgiving with your inlaws, which includes two different cultures- your nuclear family and your spouse’s nuclear family.

Whether your own parents came from different religious backgrounds or different parts of the country.

“We are always culture shifting and code switching we are just not as conscious of it when it’s more subtle”

Priya’s profession, now, is a group conflict resolution facilitator.

But she realized that, until college, she was a chameleon- she code switched.

Priya acted certain ways in each of her parents’ households, though she didn’t notice it happening until her husband pointed it out much later.

For example, if someone sneezed in her mother’s house, she would say “bless you”, but if someone sneezed in her father’s house, she would say “God bless you”.

For a long time, survival meant keeping one side quiet.

For Priya, the biggest conflict between her two homes was religion- in one household there was one correct version of the truth that just didn’t exist in the other.

It was painful to be a part of one household that believes the other part of her family was going to hell.

So she separated herself for many years.

However, in college Priya began thinking about what her own ideas were.

When she was hosting her wedding, a big gathering in which all of her family from different parts of her life who had seen her in different contexts were all going to be in the same room, she had to figure out what rituals and what values were going to represent her, especially when she couldn’t just tuck away one half of her family for that moment.

On code switching:

Code switching: knowing the norms, the vocabulary, the values, and the actual language of a community, and being able to speak in that code.

For example, in the context of responding to a sneeze in her two households:

In one context it’s appropriate to say “bless you”, but she wouldn’t imply a God because it’s too religious, yet in the other, the belief is that the only thing that could bless a human is the divine, therefore, God is included in the response.

Another version of this idea is double consciousness.

Double consciousness comes from the African-American school of thought, which Langston Hughes wrote a lot about.

Double consciousness: being able to have your experience as a minority or subgroup and knowing the ways and norms of your group (as simple as knowing how to do your own hair), but also knowing the ways, language, and codes of the majority group (and being able to do their hair).

If you’re good at code switching, if you’re good at showing up and fitting in, which can be really helpful to you, but also extremely damaging to your soul.

And you can’t look at code switching outside the context of power.

When one is code switching, or hiding a part of oneself because you don’t feel safe were you to show it, that is a damaging situation.

However, being biracial and bicultural has made Priya extremely successful as a conflict resolution facilitator.

When groups are in conflict about their identities, she can share experiences of hearing family members repeatedly argue for their side, and she can take on multiple world views.

“In all things around living well and living in the real life, choice really matters”.

When she puts on her conflict resolution hat, and she chooses to put on this ability to speak in multiple languages (meaning norms)- that is a healthy form of code switching.

However, she also remembers feeling embarrassed and afraid as a teenager at a revivalist convention watching an infomercial of Hindu gods being blown up- that is not a healthy form of code switching.

On self-care:

Often left out of the self-care conversation is that feeling of safety and being able to show up as you are.

There are so many places in which you might be in an environment that seems very light and easy going on the surface, but at the end of the day drained you because you didn’t feel safe in who you are and you didn’t have a way to work through it.

Self-care is also deeply relational.

“Self-care is… to be able to give us the fuel we need to go back out and dive into the world”

Part of self-care is that we are relational beings in a relational context and we change the world by changing ourselves but also through relationships changing one another.

In the context of the holidays, have forms of self-care like making sure you can step away and take a few breaths, but also in the sense of thinking about on what terms you are hosting and/or guesting a gathering.

Many of the ways and the forms in which we gather, we’ve inherited from other people, and we haven’t stopped to think about what we actually want our gathering to feel like, or what it would look like to put self care at the center of it.

Can you self-care together?

Think about any gathering as first asking, what is a need in your life right now that by coming together, other people could help you fulfill?

In the modern gathering, we no longer think about the purpose of us coming together, and we often just skip over the purpose and inherit the format.

Before you do anything, consider asking: do I have to do it the way it’s always been, or can I do it differently and what would I want that to look like?

“Reinventing your gathering format doesn’t have to be this exhausting deeply creative thing. It can be deeply creative, but it can also just be simply detangling the assumptions of what has to go together”.

On reinventing your gathering this holiday season:

Don’t skip the purpose. No matter how obvious it may seem, don’t skip the purpose.

What to ask yourself:

1 | What is the purpose of this gathering?

2 | What do I need, or what does my community need this year, that by coming together, we could fulfill?

3 | Who is this for and what is the simplest way for the format to reflect that?

We tend to focus a lot of the food and drinks and just allow the social dynamic to be what it is, but chit-chat can be really draining and some structure might help with that.

One way to implement structure is through an activity that Priya calls “15 Toasts”, which is a way to connect a group together through story.

Then, invite your guests to, at some point throughout the gathering, stand up, ding their glass, and give a toast to the given theme in the form of a story or experience of something they have lived.

This allows people to meaningfully connect, but also to give toasts that aren’t just to a person.

It allows people to toast a value that people can all have different interpretations of, but still unite in a meaningful way.

We spend so much time hyper focused on the ways that we’re different, that our brains start to just focus on that and we find that we can’t see the ways that we are the same.

On what creates transformative gatherings:

Priya interviewed over 100 gatherers in different contexts, all who gather people in extreme ways (in the extreme, you can see the ordinary).

She interviewed a choreographer for Cirque du Soleil, a dominatrix, a Rabbi, a camp counselor of a Jewish-Arab summer camp, among others, and asked all of them what created transformative gatherings.

Over and over, two themes came up.

Transformative gatherings have:

1 | Some amount of intimacy or vulnerability, of removing the veil.

2 | Some amount of heat, some amount of risk (such as through vulnerability or by exploring an issue with some amount of taboo in a safe way)

On making this happen:

Priya’s advice for those who feel like they’re the only one in the family who thinks that this is a good idea: find allies in the family.

The gathering begins before it begins; if you bring it up on the fly it is likely to get shot down quickly.

However, if multiple family members agree that the gathering could be reinvented, they may be more likely to be on board, informally, beforehand.

“90% of the gathering success happens before anyone walks into the room”.

And invite with intention.

Maybe just invite the people who are meaningful to you and invite them with specific intentions to let them know.

Or maybe have that open call, inviting everyone, to see all the people who you don’t usually see during the year.

Just know why you’re gathering, and make your invitation as specific and meaningful as possibly, rather than just conveying the logistics.

Make a there, there.

Intentionally host, but also intentionally guest.

Think about, how do I want to show up?

What does it mean to be pro-social, meaning how do I be mindful of the group?

On the spiral supper:

What if you invited just a few people, and had an intention-setting dinner?

Have a dinner, don’t even do it in the new year, do it before.

And during that dinner, set intentions and hopes, define your practices, and determine how you’ll keep each other accountable, and then do another one 6 weeks later.

Self care is relational, so how do you set up self-care so you’re not doing it alone?

How do I thoughtfully create a focused container, to have meaningful connection with the people that I love?

“Simplifying isn’t always easy, but it is sometimes so much more gratifying because you get to the essence of what matters”.

An idea that comes from Big Magic, by Elizabeth Gilbert, is that of the trickster and the martyr.

The martyr might look at something and say, “I have to do this and it’s so hard”, but the trickster might say “how do I make this more joyful?”.

If you’re thinking about gathering, as a guest or a host, how can you move from a martyr to a trickster?

How can we not throw out the ritual, but reinvent the ritual in a way that reflects our lives?

On Priya now:

She is launching a company around gathering and they are beginning to train people on how to design gatherings that matter at a national level, in both small and big ways.

Priya is also a part of the Together Live tour, (with other individuals like Cheryl Strayed, Brene Brown, Reese Witherspoon, Abby Wambach, and Glennon Doyle) a group gathering to tell stories around the country from November 3rd-19th.

Priya and Robyn both ask that you send them examples of how you’re gathering and applying the trickster to your lives by tagging them @realfoodwholelife and @priyaparker.

“Gather boldly, take one risk this season and think about how you gather, how you guest, and how you host”.

On what it means to be healthy:

“In Hindi there is a term called swasthya, which… translates as health, and my grandfather… used to say to me that swasthya, the deeper translated meaning of swasthya is to be seated inside the self”

Listen Now!

Guest Info

Priya Parkeris a master facilitator and the founder of Thrive Labs, at which she helps activists, elected officials, corporate executives, educators, and philanthropists create transformative gatherings. Trained in the field of conflict resolution, Parker has worked on race relations on American college campuses and on peace processes in the Arab world, southern Africa, and India. She studied organizational design at M.I.T., public policy at the Harvard Kennedy School, and political and social thought at the University of Virginia. She is the author of The Art of Gathering: How We Meet and Why It Matters. Find her online at www.priyaparker.com and @PriyaParker on Twitter and Instagram.

3 More Feel Good Effect Episodes You’ll Love

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Instead of getting stuck in the holiday spiral this year, use this time to ditch perfection, comparison, and overwhelm.

How to Avoid the Holiday Downward Spiral & Cultivate an Intentional Season Instead

In this episode, we talk about the different ways the downward holiday spiral comes up in self-talk, we compare two versions of the same holiday weekend, one in the downward spiral and one that is more intentional and incremental, and we talk about specific tactics to use to approach this holiday season intentionally and incrementally.

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Shownotes

Today we are talking about how to avoid the holiday downward spiral and how to cultivate an intentional season instead.

Whether you’re someone who feels like they fall off the wagon around this time of year, we’re going to talk about how to flip the script on the whole idea of wagon, as well as some specific, actionable, tactical things you can do to make the most out of the few months we have left in this year.

I love going to you guys and asking for ideas for shows, and this one came right from our community, both from questions and DM’s from Instagram @realfoodwholelife as well as on the Real Food Whole Life Community Facebook group, which you can join here, or just search and request access.

I noticed a lot of questions and conversations around how to really make the most of the holiday season instead of turning into this downward spiral where you’re not making intentional choices and then you feel like you’re in a hole going into the new year.

If this episode really resonates, I would love for you to share it on instagram and tag me @realfoodwholelife, and tell me a couple of ways you’re going to be more intentional and incremental in this holiday season.

This episode is brought to you by our Wellness Personality Guide that you can grab here.

If you haven’t already, I encourage you to take the quiz before we go through some updates and it’s gone (as long as you’re on our email list you’ll get the new one!).

There are so many amazing things coming in 2019, and I don’t want you to miss it!

And knowing your wellness personality really helps you be intentional and be incremental as we go through the rest of this year, and into the new year.

On the remainder of this year:

For many people, this combo of Halloween and the beginning of November is really the official beginning of the holiday season.

As this show goes live on November 7th, we officially have 54 days left in 2018!

What I think is so interesting about our perception of time and our whole mindset around the holidays, is that we have 54 days left of the year, we have two full months left, and yet, sometimes we get stuck in this idea of of all-or-nothing, might as well throw in the towel, go crazy for the next two months, and just make up for it in January.

But if you just take a step back and think about it, 54 days is a lot of days.

It’s a great opportunity to start making some intentional, incremental changes now, so that when you hit January 1st you don’t feel like you have to start over.

And that’s really what this whole conversation is about.

On how the holiday spiral shows up:

I want to talk about how that holiday spiral shows up by really calling out some of the thoughts we have or the ways that we talk to ourselves as we go through the months of November and December.

Sometimes that shows up by the voice in your head saying something along the lines of:

1 | I already blew it, so why not

2 | I'll start in January

3 | I deserve to indulge

4 | It's a tradition

5 | It's a special occasion

6 | I don't want to disappoint anyone

7 | The holidays should be perfect

8 | Everyone else is living a Christmas story

The holidays can really provoke feelings of isolation, of loneliness, of anxiety.

It feels like there’s a never ending to-do list with all of the extra things or like everyone else has somebody and you’re feeling alone.

It’s a really interesting dichotomy between what we think it should be and what it is in reality.

First, it’s really knowing and hearing those things that you’re telling yourself so you can become aware of them.

And then you can flip the script a little bit, and go through these next 54 days with a different perspective and some real tools to make it a better, more fulfilling and intentional experience.

Two versions of a holiday weekend:

So, my family has a go-big or go-home mentality about the holidays, and it took me some time to learn to step out of this spiral and make some intentional choices so that I don’t end up feeling like I have to start from scratch in January.

I want to walk you through two versions of a holiday weekend: one weekend that’s more of a spiral version, and one that’s more intentional and incremental.

First, is this downward spiral version.

Let’s take Thanksgiving weekend, for example.

This is a very real example of something that’s coming up in the next couple of weeks for our family, and many of yours as well.

Usually I take a half-day on Wednesday to go to the grocery store, and if you are somebody who is responsible for Thanksgiving dinner, then you know what a mistake it is to go to the grocery store in the afternoon the day before.

It’s very aggressive and people are not in a great mood because they feel stressed and overwhelmed and they have so much to do.

So, I go to the grocery store, try to battle it out for a parking spot, try to grab everything I need, come home, unpack, spend a couple hours getting things ready, maybe have several glasses of wine because I’m exhausted, tired and overwhelmed.

And maybe family is home or my sister comes into town but I ignore them because I am focusing on creating a perfect Thanksgiving meal.

The next morning I get up early, because I have so much to do, so many things to get ready, so much to prepare for, and I don’t workout, I don't get dressed.

I stay in my pj’s, I cook, I skip breakfast because I have so much to do and I want to save room to indulge during Thanksgiving dinner.

Noon comes around and I might as well open that bottle of wine because I’m exhausted, tired, and stressed, and people are around me but I’m not able to engage or connect with them because I am so concerned about all the things that need to be done.

Of course, I skip lunch too because I am going to make the most out of Thanksgiving dinner.

And things just kind of devolve from there.

We sit down to eat and I really overdo it, eating way too much so that I feel sick and stuffed and I can’t even really enjoy all the work that went into it.

I have dessert, and then I go back for seconds and thirds because it’s Thanksgiving, so why not?

I go to bed lethargic, super bloated, and exhausted and then here’s what happens: one day out of 365 is not a big deal, but the next morning is where things really start to spiral.

My family has this tradition of eating pie for breakfast (dad- I blame you!).

And this is the thing that happens- other people around you have traditions and they want you to indulge and they want you to have fun.

So the next day when I wake up not feeling great, I just grab a piece of pie instead of starting fresh, because why not?

And then I have two or three cups of coffee, and I was going to work out this morning because I have the day off, but I’m just not feeling it so I skip that.

And then lunch rolls around and I’m going to have leftovers, and then dinner rolls around and I don’t feel like cooking so we order takeout, and there’s wine left so let’s just open that.

We go into the weekend and it’s just a repeat of this with pie for breakfast but then maybe I make my way out to the mall and do some shopping and I might take advantage of the new peppermint mocha, because now it’s Christmas and it’s time to get into Christmas mode, and then we go to lunch, and then we come home and crash on the couch, and I go to bed and I’m exhausted and tired and just don’t feel great.

You’re holiday might not look anything like that, I just wanted to give it as an example of a way we can start this overall spiral.

Maybe your holiday involves people in your family who you just don’t get along with so the holiday is just filled with fighting.

Or maybe you’re someone who is alone right now, so instead of having all that family around, you don’t have a place to celebrate.

There are so many ways that the holidays can play out and that downward spiral can trigger thoughts like I already blew it so why not?, I’ll start in January, etc.

Now I want to present you with an alternative, which is an intentional more incremental approach to that same weekend.

Then we’ll talk about some very tactical things you can do to flip the script, change the way you’re approaching this, and have a different experience for these 54 days.

Instead of going to the grocery store the afternoon before, I spend some time planning a week ahead, and I go the weekend before early in the morning (early morning the Sunday before Thanksgiving is pretty quiet at the store).

I take about 20 minutes to plan and get that out of the way, or I take advantage of online ordering, and I have the groceries delivered.

Either way, I’m not battling the craziness of the grocery store on the day before a holiday.

And then I get very incremental about prepping for dinner.

I could prep a couple things Monday evening, I could make the stuffing on Tuesday night, and then Wednesday afternoon maybe spend a couple hours making one or two things but especially inviting my family into the kitchen where we can spend some intentional time prepping food and actually talking to each other.

The next morning I get up and have a huge glass of water, and I go and move my body.

The fun thing is that a lot of exercise studios around the country offer early Thanksgiving morning classes, so I’ll go to my yoga studio, or we go do a little run at the Turkey Trot, or we take a rainy day hike.

I come home and actually have a good breakfast with some protein, fat, and fiber, giving myself the nourishment I need for the day.

And then I take care of whatever cooking I have left to do and spend some more intentional time with my family, even if that just means hanging out and watching a football game.

We like to do something called “The Turkey Bowl”, where we have different games going on around the house, like darts in the garage, a few different board games, something like bags or cornhole, and we might change things up but the idea is that we spend time together doing something.

Then, at Thanksgiving, I get all the things I really love, but I leave all the things I don’t.

If I’m not a big fan of something, I don’t have it just because it’s Thanksgiving.

“I just take one moment as I’m creating my plate to say, what do I really want, and how much of it would it take to fulfill me without overdoing it?”

Same thing when it comes to dessert, I might want to try all the pies so I may take a sliver of each, but I’ll still continue to ask myself, do I still really like this, or am I just eating it because it’s on my plate?

It can be really tricky, but it’s a great strategy, especially when there are times when you do want to indulge.

Taste it, and ask, is this really worth it? and if it is, keep going, if it’s not, you have permission to stop.

So when you wake up the next day, you have the perfect opportunity to reset, and not beat yourself up or feel like you fell off the wagon so you might as well have a whole crazy weekend.

Just to say I really enjoyed myself this weekend and it was totally worth it.

Or maybe there were some things that weren’t worth it, but I’m going to have a big glass of water and a big breakfast (that’s not pie- or maybe it is if that’s something that brings you happiness!).

And maybe I eat leftovers for lunch, or maybe I go back to my normal lunch, because for me, eating multiple days of leftovers is not worth it that I know from the past.

So maybe I freeze leftovers or I find someone else that wants to eat it, but I’m going to go back to my normal way of eating.

And then I get moving.

I go on a long walk with my sister so we can catch up or take advantage of Small Business Saturday as a chance to get a lot of walking in and connect again.

That was the exact same weekend, with a little more intentionality and a little more of an incremental approach.

And you can apply this to every single one of the 54 day we have left this year.

“Every day is a chance for a reset.

Every meal is a chance for a reset.

Every moment with your family and friends is a chance to be there, to be intentional, and to be present”.

You don’t have to get it right every time!

The idea here is not to be perfect.

The idea here is not to compare yourself with what other people are doing, what you think the ideal version of the holidays is.

And it’s not to get so overwhelmed by what you think that you’re supposed to that you miss out on what’s really happening right now.

On actionable tips to make a plan (for these 54 days):

First, start by getting intentional about approaching this holiday season.

1 | Getting intentional:

Create a holiday splurge list:

Go through the next two months (whatever traditions you observe, November and December are filled with opportunities to celebrate) and think about what you really enjoy doing-- the splurges that are really worth it.

Whether it be that Thanksgiving dinner, or drinks out with friends, or a family tradition of Christmas cookie decorating, those really special traditions that make the holidays.

I don’t think we should have to go without or be in total deprivation mode, it’s just a matter of taking a moment to really reflect on what’s worth the splurge.

And once you come up with that splurge list, you have a game plan for the holidays.

Create a holiday to-do + to-don't list with purpose:

This is one of my favorite things to do, planning ahead and looking at all the things I need to-do for the holidays, and all the things I’m not going to do.

“The not-do is just as important as the to-do”.

First, I look at all the events we’ve been invited to and say yes to the ones that do have meaning to us, and we say graceful no to the things that are not going to fill our cup.

Saying no or declining invites can be hard and a little bit uncomfortable, but at the end of the day, I am trying to create an intentional two months.

We really have to be disciplined here about saying yes to things, and then also about saying no to things.

I really want you to create a filter of do-to and also of to-don’t, so that everything does not become a to-do.

Granted, there may be a lot of things that you feel obligated to do, but always ask yourself, do I have to do this, or is this a want-to-do?

And every time you add something to your to-do list, think about if you can take something off.

My second tip is about getting incremental.

2 | Getting incremental:

Manage the 3 M’s: Meals + Movement + Mind:

This is a season to take baby steps.

When it comes to the 3 M’s, come back to them daily or weekly and just ask yourself, how am I managing them?

How am I managing meals?

Am I getting completely off track? If so, how do I get back on track?

Start with eating breakfast, and then a lunch, and then a dinner at home, and go from there.

Same thing with movement- how am I managing movement?

If I have found days have gone by without movement, how can I change that?

Is it because it’s dark and cold outside? How can I take advantage of online workouts, or how can I sign up for a gym now?

And how am I managing my mind?

Am I getting enough sleep? Am I connecting with people in a meaningful way?

If I’m feeling lonely, am I finding a way to connect? If I’m feeling anxious, am I finding a way to take a breath and find some meaning and grounding?

Use those 3 M’s as guideposts to give yourself a sense of where you are in managing them on a daily and weekly basis.

2 out of 3:

How can I get 2 out of 3 when I’m in a season of indulgences?

It can really be applied to everything, but I often apply it to my meals throughout the day.

If I have a splurge dinner, I try to make sure that the breakfast and lunch are full of really nutritious, nourishing, real food.

It can also be days, if I have a day that really felt out of control, I try to make the next two days full of movement and great meals.

You can even think about this in terms of weeks, if you have a bad week try to make the next two weeks really about nourishment and really taking care of yourself.

It gives you this permission to be a human, to have some wiggle room, and to just be incremental.

“We’re going for process, not perfection. What you do most of the time matters more than what you do some of the time”.

Reset days:

Give yourself a full reset day.

Make sure you have those in your calendar- plan in full reset days where you don’t have anything going on.

These are days when you’re getting enough sleep, where you fill yourself with hydration, movement, real food, and connection, so that you can fill your cup and go into the next day feeling refreshed and revived.

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This episode of the Feel Good Effect podcast focuses on how to listen to that intuitive food voice we all have and how to quit the serial dieting cycle.

How to Tune Into Your Intuitive Food Voice and Stop Serial Dieting, with Robyn Youkilis

This week’s guest is Robyn Youkilis, a certified health coach, author, speaker, and leading expert in holistic digestive health. Robyn is the founder and CEO of the global health coaching practice, Your Healthiest You, and the author of bestselling books, Go With Your Gut and Thin From Within.

Robyn offers advice for those who are constantly looking outside themselves for a fix as well as those interested in this lifestyle change, explains why the gut matters and how fermented foods play a role in gut health, and breaks down her rule of 5 in building a meal.

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Show Notes

Today’s guest on the Feel Good Effect is Robyn Youkilis, a certified health coach, author, speaker, and leading expert in holistic digestive health.

Robyn is the founder and CEO of the global health coaching practice, Your Healthiest You, and for nearly a decade she has helped clients shed emotional and physical weight with her supportive coaching style

Part of this journey around our intuitive food voice and getting off the diet train is really about cooking your own food and nourishing yourself in that way, which takes a little prep and planning.

On what inspired her books:

Robyn has struggled with weight her whole life.

At 13, she started to notice differences in how her body was changing compared to everyone else’s and how she looked compared to how women looked in magazines.

She felt like something was wrong with her that needed to be edited, and that began what she called a career of dieting.

Essentially, it was a conversation around “something’s wrong with me and my body, I need to fix it, here are the ways that I can fix it. Here’s how everyone else has the keys to what I deemed a problem”.

Robyn read about diets from magazines and tried what the celebrities were eating, but it was part of a larger mass message: this is the way, and you don’t know anything.

Her mom wasn’t really sure how to talk to her about it; she saw Robyn fluctuating in her weight and obsessing over it, but no one had the conversation with her mom, either.

This continued into college where she continued with an unhealthy diet.

She never really had an answer or a solution to it, but she did have quite a bit of spirit, sass, and confidence and she continued to live some version of her best life, even though she was struggling on the inside.

Robyn ended up finding her way to nutrition school through a deep love of food.

Although Robyn struggled with her weight, her mother was an incredible cook who made extravagant meals throughout the week.

She remembers watching her father struggle with his weight, too, and watched him go through the various diet fads.

When she went to nutrition school, she went with an interest in food and a hope to have a career with food.

Robyn attended the Institute of Integrative Nutrition nearly a decade ago and realized that she had some serious eating stuff going on.

She started to take a look at what she was eating, how she was eating, the habits she had created around food, and her mindset around food.

“None of this was technically what I’d classify as an eating disorder, but it was definitely disordered eating behavior”

She didn’t feel nourished by, supported by or connected to her food.

It was more like trying to leave some food on the plate at the end of her meals or only having a bite of dessert.

But when that wouldn’t happen, she would hate herself.

And then she would try the next new diet.

Even though she learned a lot about what she was going through, she wasn’t really able to find her own way through it.

Healthy had become another diet.

What really shifted all of this and prompted both of her books, was this new way of connecting to her body and her intuition.

She acknowledged all the information, but also found herself looking outside of herself for something to fix her- feeling like something is wrong and someone else has the keys to make it better.

It all shifted when she started to talk about family planning, wanting to create the best environment for her baby and then realizing, this body is her body too and she should treat it with the same respect as she would for a child.

So she started to think about that, connect to herself, connect to her body, slow down more, and develop her intuitive food voice, asking: What would feel supportive right now? What do I need to eat here? What would feel good?

Getting calmer around her food, getting quieter, slowing down, and really going through those steps of inquiry was the real inspiration for her book.

“There was something here that needed to be shared: there was a way that we could talk about ourselves and have these goals of wanting to get better in our bodies, but coming from a place of support and love rather than shame and fixing”.

Advice for those who are constantly looking outside themselves for a fix:

Ask yourself: “What do I really need here? What’s really going on?”

This isn’t to find the answer that’s going to be the key to everything, rather, it’s more about starting to have that real conversation with yourself so you can get curious and start to release yourself from the idea that there is a there.

Robyn remembers looking back at photos of herself from a trip where even when she was practicing yoga daily and training for a marathon, she was still thinking, “I wasn’t thin enough. I didn’t look good enough”.

But now, she looks back at those same photos and thinks “if you weren’t there when you were there in this place, there is no there”.

Use that process of inquiry to get real with yourself and connect to that release of there.

“Its finding that sweet spot between working towards loving yourself as you are right now, just climbing your way to higher, more loving thoughts, but still actually doing some work to get you to a more balanced place”

In that way, Robyn is about the emotional and the practical.

The emotional component is doing that inquiry, doing some journaling, and asking those harder questions; it's noticing what feels heavy in your life right now.

The practical component comes in because some of us really do need to be meal prepping or be more mindful while we are eating; these are practical tools to anchor us along the way.

The key with practical tools, though, is to pick one or two and use them to support you.

Women were coming to her without directly talking about weight loss, but somehow it was part of their goals.

The idea of thin from within came from the question: “if you’re connecting to what you really want in your soul, how can we bring that out and reshape it in a new way?”

So much is happening around self love and body positivity, but with that, there is some shaming around women who still want to lose weight.

This is a new way we can have these conversations from a place of support and a place of love.

Using “thin” in the title, connects to people’s old diet brain while giving them a new way to think about it.

“A desire to lose weight is a sign that we want something different in our bodies, but even more so in our lives… It’s only when you consider your body as whole that you will finally feel that lightness you’ve been searching for on the scale”.

Body positivity is great, but there are plenty of people with legitimate reasons for wanting to lose weight as well.

You can come at it from a place of self-hatred, or you can come at it from a place of self-love with a desire to nurture.

It’s a complicated, messy conversation that has so many layers; for some people the title is going to be what turns them off, but for some people that’s what’s going to get them.

All these flat-this, flat-that conversations have a ton of followers, and even though we’re all having this body positivity talk, people are still ordering flat-tummy tea.

On why the gut matters:

Starting with the gut leads to so many positive changes.

The gut is the center of our being; it digests and assimilates the nutrients from our food, but it also is physically the center.

Its where majority of our immune system is: 70-80% of immune tissue is in the digestive tract.

The gut is also like our second brain; emotional well being and how we perceive ourselves and the world comes from our belly.

And then there is a huge emotional, intuitive piece.

We all have those feelings from deep inside meant to guide us, it’s just about how strong it is for you or how often you’re listening to or trusting it.

Starting with the gut seems to have the quickest, deepest, and longest results; it is a great place to base everything else off of.

And it’s really accessible; even if you don’t have a super restrictive diet or an illness you can understand that the gut is important.

On the rule of five:

Robyn’s rule of five is a great template on how to think about your food or structure a lunch or dinner.

A lot of clients that were coming to her were dieting through their meal, but eating through their days, meaning their meals didn't have enough micro- or macronutrients to physically sustain them.

Your body likes to burn through all the fuel you give it before you pile something else on it.

It comes from Ayurveda, an ancient healing system from the Sages in India, a sister practice to Yoga, that focuses on nurturing the mind, body, spirit, and soul.

Think about it like a pot of rice: if your rice is almost done cooking and you throw some more grains on the pot, they’re not going to cook.

The same thing happens in your digestive system.

However, mind you,

“know thyself and go with your gut”.

If gut issues aren’t most prevalent for you and you do better eating every few hours, go with that rather than focusing on denser meals.

The rule of five plate:

When building your plate, think about:

1 | Greens: include a salad or serving of cooked greens on your plate

Check in with your intuition, or experiment to see how well you can digest raw greens.

2 | Healthy fat: these are essential for nutrient and vitamin absorption and help you feel full.

3 | Protein: similar to healthy fats, these are satisfying for the body and a great macronutrient.

4 | Fermented food: something like raw, fermented, probiotic-rich sauerkraut that is going to be loaded with good for your gut bacteria.

This is going to help your body digest the meal you’re eating and is an ultimate superfood (with highly absorbable vitamin-C and anti-cancer compounds).

Note: this is not the same stuff you get in a jar; it needs to be like yogurt, found in the refrigerated section and to says something like raw, fermented, probiotic-rich, or no vinegar, so you know you have a live culture in it.

*Bean pasta: pasta made from black beans or chickpeas (experiment with what works for you!)

On eating fermented foods:

In American, we are typically are the only culture that don’t include a fermented food into our staple diet.

Around the world, we see fermented foods like kimchi, sauerkraut, natto, miso, tempeh, and injera bread.

And we’ve all partaken in fermented foods, but they might not be a version with a raw or live probiotic bacteria in them (foods like bread, wine, chocolate, and cheese all have a fermentation process).

Today we are talking about ones that either have some probiotic compound in them, or are easier for your body to digest.

Tempeh, which doesn’t contain live enzymes, is a fermented version of soybeans, or tofu, but it is predigested through fermentation process so it is easier for your body to break down.

We just aren’t really used to the flavor of probiotic rich foods.

It’s okay to think it’s weird, but you might like the flavor and, even more so, you might love how you feel.

Within fermentation, is a process of lactofermentation, which is when starches (carbohydrates and sugars) are transformed into bacteria boosting agents, via lactic acid.

Lactic acid contains probiotics which nourish the probiotics that are already growing in our belly or microbiome.

There are trillions of bacteria living on and in us and to be in their optimal state, they have to be fed.

If you can't digest dairy, you may be able to digest cultured dairy products, like cultured yogurt or kefir (a fermented milk drink).

This creates space for clients (and Robyn) to be on video and seen, with no hiding, where Robyn teaches from whatever she is inspired by at that time.

She’s also working towards her next book, themed around how to go with your gut in the parenting space.

On what it means to be healthy:

“Whatever feels good for you right now, knowing that what felt good yesterday, this morning, might change, so how can you connect to that voice inside of you that is here to give you that information, and how can you listen to it.

What feels good for you right now, that to me is what wellness is all about”

Listen now!

Guest Info

Robyn Youkilis is an AADP Certified Health Coach, author, speaker and leading expert in holistic digestive health. She is the Founder and CEO of the global health coaching practice, Your Healthiest You. For nearly a decade, Robyn has helped clients shed both physical and emotional weight through her straightforward yet supportive coaching style. She is the author of the best selling books, Go with Your Gut and Thin From Within - The Go with Your Gut Way to Lose Weight, and has been featured by The View, The Today Show, The Cooking Channel, The Wall Street Journal, Health, Mind Body Green, Well + Good, The Chalkboard Mag and more. Robyn currently lives in New York City and Los Angeles with her husband and their daughter, Navy. She enjoys traveling, music festivals and eating dessert at fancy restaurants, one bite at a time.

To learn more about coaching with Robyn and to join the #YourHealthiestYou community, visit www.RobynYoukilis.com.

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We will unpack body image and talk about how to accept yourself the way you are right now.

Robyn tells her story about her body image journey and offers a few mindset hacks and tactical tips to find peace, center, and calm about the way you look.

How I Learned to Accept My Body

Read on for tactical tips on how the way you think affects the way you see your body, how to change the way you talk to yourself, why we should consider what we are really measuring, dressing for the body we have now, how to get honest with the way you’re approaching food and movement, and why we should just get in the picture.

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Shownotes

In today’s episode, I share exactly how I learned to accept my body.

We will unpack body image and talk about how to accept yourself the way you are right now.

Today’s episode is brought to you by our Wellness Personality Guide, which goes so well with this episode.

It helps you understand the way that you’re thinking and how the way you’re thinking might be affecting the way you view yourself, your health, and your body.

This is been one of the keys for me to accept my body: understanding how my mind works, managing my mind, and taking advantage of my personality type to live my healthiest, fullest life and ultimately find that acceptance I was looking for.

On inspiration for this episode:

I’ve been thinking about recording this episode for a long time, and I have a lot of resistance about it.

As much as I’ve been able to find the peace and acceptance, it just doesn’t feel completely natural to talk about it.

I’m definitely (believe it or not) a very private person and an introvert.

The thing about a podcast is that you can maintain your introvert status by sitting alone in an office, talking to people without ever going out into big public spaces.

Coming from a professional background in education, health change, behavior change, and psychology, you would never go into a professional setting and start talking about personal health issues or body image.

It’s been a really interesting transition as I’ve started talking more and being more visible in the wellness space, to push myself and to have these more open, honest conversations about the things that maybe feel a little more personal.

I’m choosing to show up today because this is such an important topic and I love the conversation that is happening right now around body image, but I feel like there’s some missing pieces and that’s why I want to add to the conversation.

And the extra push I needed came from our Real Food Whole Life Simplified Reset Facebook group.

We have an incredible group of women participating right now; they’re focused on food, mindset, and really ditching all or nothing thinking when it comes to wellness.

In this group, we have a Facebook Live once a week when anyone can ask any question and I can just dive deep into unpacking some of the issues.

One of the questions was “How do I accept my body right now?”.

What a beautiful question.

I’ve been asked so many times but it just came to the forefront in that group and I wanted to be able to share it with you all here as well.

I do want to mention, though, that if you’re someone who is struggling with an eating disorder, that you would seek professional treatment.

We are talking about body image, but we aren’t getting into how to recover from an eating disorder and if talking about bodies or body image is triggering for you in any way, this probably isn’t a good episode (just skip it and come back next week!)

On my journey:

When I was growing up, I was just a tall child always above average in height (and I still am!).

I grew so fast that I was a super long, lanky kid and then a super long, lanky teenager.

And I also played sports; I played competitive basketball that had me weight training, running, or practicing in some way oriented in achievement for 2-3 hours most days.

And so that long, lanky streak just continued all the way through college and I never even considered the idea of what my body was.

I never thought about body size, but I was always a little self conscious of showing my body.

And then college hit and I really struggled.

I made a lot of poor lifestyle choices, struggled with mental health issues, and gained a lot of weight.

So when I finished college and got married, I was able to really tune in and figure out what my body needed.

I was in my early 20’s so I was able to get fit again, get back to exercise and healthy eating, and pretty quickly I returned to how I used to be.

Fast forward about 10 years.

I ended up working about 60 hours a week at a great, but high-stress, job.

I did a Master’s program and then enrolled in a Doctoral program, adding school on top of work.

I know some of you can relate to that- not putting myself first, not taking care of my body, not moving, not eating well.

And then I had multiple miscarriages, adding the stress, the emotional trauma, the weight gain from those events.

But then I got pregnant with my daughter and she was giant!

She was 10 pounds and I gained a lot of weight while I was pregnant.

When she was born I was struggling with body image- I could hardly stand to look in the mirror, I was overwhelmed, exhausted, I was stressed, and I knew I needed to make a lot of lifestyle changes.

And that was really the birth of what is now, Real Food Whole Life.

But, the story I want to tell was about 3 months after my daughter was born.

I knew I needed to start moving my body again, but it had been a really long time- at least 10 months to a year since I had really worked out.

I went to a studio with mirrors on three sides of the room and I ended up in the front of the class.

The whole time I was looking at myself in the mirror and I was caught in this disgusted, shame cycle.

It makes me so sad to talk about that, but it’s true.

I was looking in the mirror and all I was thinking was how disappointed I was in myself, how I had really just let myself go, how I had failed, and how far I had to go.

I left the studio and I got in the car with my husband and just started crying.

I was so embarrassed and so ashamed and I was comparing myself to all these beautiful, fit women and thinking “what is wrong with me?”

My husband was just so generous and said “you don’t need to worry about anyone else, you are an amazing human, you are an amazing mother, and if it’s important to you to start taking better care of yourself, let’s start there”.

I wish I could go back to that version of myself and tell her that the shame, and the embarrassment, and the self-hatred are not required for change, and in fact, just make the whole experience so much less pleasant.

“You are worthy, regardless of your body size. You are a human, who has a body. You are not your body”.

And I totally understand and am right there with you if you want to make changes for your health, but just know that you are worthy, regardless of what your body looks like.

When I was preparing for this show, I looked over the stats I keep on body image and it’s just devastating.

Only 15% of teenage girls are happy with their bodies.

Body size and self esteem are highly correlated for girls, but not for boys.

But it doesn’t have to be that way, and yes we are fighting an uphill battle here, but I want to share with you that now, 5 years later, I do feel a sense of peace and calm about my body.

Of course I have bad days here and there, I think it’s also important that we don’t lay perfectionism over body-acceptance; you don’t have to be perfect.

On mindset hacks and tactical tips to find peace, center, and calm about the way you look:

1 | Know how you think + what your personality type is.

The number one thing for me that has made the biggest difference in accepting my body is understanding the way I think and my individual personality type.

This goes back to our Wellness Personality guide, grab that resource for yourself here.

It’s really about knowing who you are, how you think, and how the way you think may be affecting the way you feel.

There are a couple ways these personalities can show up, and usually it’s perfectionism, comparison, or overwhelming guilt.

On perfectionism:

Try to be aware of how perfectionism might be showing up for you around body image and that “never good enough” mentality.

There are also stats out there about women who fall in the average range, but think if they could just lose 10 more pounds they would be happier.

But we know it’s not true- when they lose those 10 pounds, the very next thing that happens is thinking, “if I could just lose 10 more pounds…”.

It’s never enough.

Be aware of that thought pattern around perfection, around never enough, around trying to achieve an unrealistic standard, and knowing that that it is a way of thinking that can be changed.

On comparison:

Comparison shows up similarly.

On one level there is comparison to other people.

If you’re someone who is constantly looking at photos of airbrushed models and comparing yourself to them, then it’s a really good indicator that you maybe need to change what you’re looking at.

The other way comparison shows up (that I think is even more damaging) is comparing yourself to a different time, different version, or different season in your own life.

This shows up a lot around transitions- maybe you had a baby and you’re comparing your body now to your body before you had that baby.

And on top of that we have this constant drumbeat of bouncing back after having a baby, as if there’s this world where your body can actually go back to the way it was before it physically carried a human in it.

Newsflash! That world does not exist.

Maybe you can think of a person in your life or someone on social media who has that perfect bounce back, but for the majority of humans, that’s not reality.

Your body physically changes and that’s okay, but to be constantly comparing yourself to where you were before just sets you up for this cycle of disappointment.

It doesn't mean you can’t continue to take care of yourself with exercise, muscle development, or eating really well, but also knowing that change is a normal part of the human experience.

On overwhelm:

There’s also this overwhelm part of the personality where you’re just totally overwhelmed by all the things you feel like you need to do to change, you’re not sure where to start, or you’re overwhelmed by the fear of this downward spiral where you never get “control” of the way that you eat or the way that you take care of yourself.

That fear stops you in your tracks and keeps you stuck in this shame spiral about your body.

It is helpful to understand your personality type, understand if it’s perfectionism, comparison, or overwhelm that is really shaping the way you’re thinking, and then understand that the way you think can be changed.

It’s not an easy process but it’s totally possible, and the first step is just knowing the way you think.

2 | Bring awareness to the way you talk to yourself.

Notice the way you talk to yourself in all those places that bring up negative self talk (getting ready to go out, dressing rooms, etc.).

It can kind of feel not so great when you really start to bring awareness to the way you talk to yourself because you notice that you’re kind of a bully.

But here’s the cool thing: when you start to notice how you talk to yourself, you realize that maybe there’s a different way to talk to yourself (and there absolutely is!).

It’s not who you are, this version of yourself that says these mean things about your body.

That’s not who you are, that’s just what you’ve learned over time- it’s the brain’s response to how you look.

And it’s totally possible to change it.

3 | Tactical tip: talk to yourself like someone important is listening.

Think about someone in your life that is really important to you.

When you’re saying these things about your body, whatever mean thing or shame spiral you find yourself in, imagine saying those things to someone else, either about them or about yourself.

You find that you wouldn’t want to say those things in front of them or to them; it’s hurtful.

And then flip the script, rewire, and start saying some nicer things.

It doesn’t mean you have to start saying “I love my belly” or “my hips are really amazing today”, it can just be more about bringing attention and awareness to saying kind things overall.

And that can really be about the things your body does for you everyday: how amazing it is that your legs carry you from place to place, or that your lungs fill with breath every single day and allow you to breathe and move through life, or that your arms can pick up that baby that changed your body.

Start to change that conversation in your head from all the things you don’t like, to kindness and gratitude.

Here’s the interesting part: when you practice something over and over, your brain gets very efficient at it. The neurons fire together and it becomes very efficient.

Over the years, you’ve gotten very efficient at looking at your body and saying unkind things and finding all the flaws- it’s just how your brain has gotten wired.

It’s your first automatic response.

But, if you start practicing talking to yourself like someone important is listening, then you can actually start to rewire your brain.

Over time, those reactions and thoughts will become more natural and you will find the sense of peace that you’re looking for.

4 | Consider what you’re measuring.

If you are scale obsessed, measuring tape obsessed, or before-and-after selfie obsessed, just consider what you’re actually measuring.

You’re really just measuring the shape of your body, and that’s fine if that works for you, but if you find it constantly makes you feel like you aren’t enough, you have a choice to change that.

“The problem with using the scale or tape measure to measure success is that is putting so much emphasis on the shape of your physical body and no emphasis on all the other ways that health can show up”.

I ditched my scale and instead, I like to start my day with three questions as part of my 5 minute morning:

How do I want to feel today?

What do I want to focus on?

What do I want to let go of?

And then maybe checking in in the evening: did I feel how I wanted to feel today? What did I focus on and what was I able to let go of?

To me, that’s a better measure of wellness.

5 | Dress for your body right now.

I know that there are so many women right now with multiple pairs of jeans in their closet that they think maybe they’ll fit into one day, and until they do, they can’t be completely happy.

This comes back to considering what you’re measuring.

You’re measuring and comparing yourself to a version of yourself that’s not here.

Buy a pair of jeans that fit, get some workout clothes that make you feel really good, and ditch the past version of yourself, ditch those old jeans that make you feel bad, and just dress the body you have right now.

6 | Get honest with how you’re approaching food and movement.

I think when we use the word acceptance, we think it means giving up.

But I don’t think it means that at all.

At the end of my yoga classes, I like to talk about the concept of surrender.

Surrender does not mean give up, it doesn’t mean wave the white flag, it doesn’t mean throw in the towel- it simply means to be in this present moment.

Surrender control of the breath, surrender control of the mind, and just be in this moment.

By being in the moment, you’re able to go out into the world and continue on your path of self improvement.

“Acceptance just means to know that you are where you are right now, and that you can approach that from a place of kindness, a place of mindfulness, a place of self trust, and by coming at it from that place with self compassion, that you are able to put yourself on this path that is so much more joyful, and so much more well.

And that maybe can actually help you ask these questions and get really honest with how you’re approaching food and how you’re approaching movement”.

Instead of coming at healthy eating and movement with a diet-mentality or a punishment, I come at it as a way I nourish myself and as something I deserve.

My body shows up for me, so I’m going to show up for my body.

7 | Get in the picture.

Start getting in every picture!

Have you ever looked back at pictures of yourself, and thought, “I look amazing!” or “look how young I was!”, and then remember, “I had no idea at the time”?

Maybe you can shift the way you think and apply that future self to how you see yourself now.

Or maybe you can look at that picture the way someone who loves you looks at it, or the way a child might look at it, and let this be your practice.

Know that you have a choice to come back and practice looking with love and kindness, practice looking from the future with appreciation, practice looking through the eyes of someone who loves you for you.

“You are beautiful, you are worthy and you are so much more than your body”.

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In this conversation, we dive into how to cultivate self compassion in your own life, what it has to do with well being, and how to use self compassion to reach wellness goals.

Read on to learn more about why self compassion is so important, and how to make it a part of your life.

How to Cultivate Self-Compassion with Dr. Kristen Neff

Today’s guest is self compassion expert, Dr. Kristin Neff, an associate professor of educational psychology at the University of Texas, Austin and a pioneer in field of self compassion research.

Dr. Neff talks about how to use mindfulness, kindness in response, and framing imperfection in light of the human experience to experience compassion.

She also discusses how self compassion is not self esteem, self pity, weak, or selfish.

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Show Notes

Today we are going deep into self-compassion.

In this conversation, we dive into how to cultivate self compassion in your own life, what it has to do with well being, and how to use self compassion to reach wellness goals.

Today’s guest is self compassion expert, Dr. Kristin Neff.

She is an associate professor of educational psychology at the University of Texas, Austin and a pioneer in field of self compassion research.

Over a decade ago, Dr. Neff conducted the first empirical study on self compassion.

She has written numerous articles, book chapters, and her own books and programs on the subject.

When I talk about gentle over perfect, I am talking about embracing and cultivating self compassion.

Talking about mindset and embracing self compassion is not always as popular as the next quick fix, but self compassion is linked to overall well being as well as reaching and sustaining wellness goals.

It is just as essential to have a kind response to suffering, although we give more readily to others and tend to be more harsh on ourselves.

Be kind, warm, and supportive to yourself.

3 | Framing imperfection in light of the human experience.

Compassion is different from pity.

Everyone is imperfect.

We tend to logically assume that normal is perfect, and when something goes wrong, it feels like you’re the only one who has failed or is suffering.

But, reminding ourselves that we are not alone in failure or suffering leads to connection in our struggles, without getting stuck in self pity.

“Most people are much much kinder to others than they are to themselves and we really harm ourselves in the process… we do ourselves a lot of damage through this mistaken belief that we aren't good enough and we should be perfect”

On what self compassion is not:

1 | Self compassion is not self esteem.

“Self compassion provides a sense of self worth; it’s unconditional”.

Self esteem is often contingent on unrealistic standards; there are damaging consequences to this quest for perfection.

Self compassion is different.

Over time, sense of self worth is more stable than self esteem

2 | Self compassion is not self pity.

Self-compassion helps dissolve the sense of separate self

When we are self critical and lost in shame, we are self focused.

Recognizing that you are a human being doing their best, like everyone else, decreases the sense of separate self and increases the connection to others.

You could call it inner-compassion, instead of self.

“By including ourselves in the circle of compassion, as opposed to treating ourselves radically differently, we’re actually decreasing the sense of separation”

3 | Self compassion is not weak.

People tend to think that the inner critic is strong and self compassion is weak.

“Self compassion is one of the most powerful sources of strength, coping and resilience that we have available”.

In one of Dr. Neff’s studies, she found that veterans coming home from Iraq and Afghanistan with higher levels of self compassion were less likely to develop PTSD 9 months later.

Who do you want inside your head? An enemy, or an ally?

4 | Self compassion is not selfish.

Meeting our own needs, being there for ourselves, and being supportive for ourselves allows us to be there for others.

When we only focus on others, we burnout.

The human brain is build for empathetic resonance, meaning that we feel the pain of others.

When you are in the presence of someone in pain, the pain centers of your brain are being activated.

The word empathy is used in a lot of different ways; a lot of times when people use the word empathy, they are referring to something along the lines of compassion or caring.

Empathy is actually a function of the brain; we have specialized neurons called mirror neurons that allow us to feel what others feel.

Evolutionarily, being able to empathize and feel what others feel and allowed us to survive in social groups.

However, empathizing doesn't mean caring.

It can be used to take advantage of others as much as help.

Empathy is basically a neutral ability: “I feel what others feel”.

On the other hand, compassion is to feel the pain someone else is feeling, actually care, and want to alleviate their suffering.

Empathy and compassion look different in the brain, too.

Looking at empathetic resonance: when watching video of someone getting their finger slammed in a door, the pain centers in the brain light up.

Looking at giving compassion: when holding this empathetic pain in loving, connected, presence, the reward centers in the brain become activated.

The loving, connected, presence holds the pain, creating a positive emotion that allows us to not be overwhelmed by the pain.

“Caregivers who have self compassion, it’s one of the most powerful gifts you can give to those you care for”

With compassion, caregivers are less likely to burnout, and when we embody compassion, others can pick it up through their mirror neurons, too.

On self care versus self compassion:

Self care is something we do off the job, like getting a massage, resting, eating well, etc.

It’s important, but it doesn’t help in those moment when we are experiencing empathetic resonance; it's not enough for caregivers.

Rather, self compassion is something we do in the moment, on the job, when we are experiencing empathetic resonance and feeling someone’s pain.

Some people can be triggered around idea of self.

It can help to explain to others how the brain works, explaining how others pick up on what you’re embodying.

You can call it inner resilience training or strength practices instead of compassion; there tends to be less resistance from these.

On practicing self compassion:

Self compassion break: A self compassion break is reminding yourself of the three components of self compassion when you're in a difficult situation: Loving, Connected, Presence.

This is meant to remind you to be mindful.

Even so far as to say to yourself, “this is really hard”, can help you take a mindful stance adding perspective, reminding you that the struggle is part of life, part of common humanity and human experience.

Speak to yourself kindly and find language that works for you, memorizing phrases that remind you of common humanity.

Touch: we are sensitive to touch as a signal of care.

Try to put your hands on your heart, on your face, or holding your own hands; use touch as a signal of care.

For more accessibility, she also has the training in a workbook format, “The Mindful Self Compassion Workbook”.

On what's next:

Next up, Dr. Neff wants to explore what she calls the Yin and the Yang of self compassion.

The Yin of self compassion describes learning to be with oneself in a compassionate way, soothing the self, comforting, and validating pain.

The Yang of self compassion describes more of acting in the world, protecting ourselves, providing for ourselves, and motivating ourselves to take action.

Sometimes self compassion can take the form of fierce compassion, when we need to say no to others (or ourselves).

Gender stereotypes bias these two forms of self compassion.

Women are not encouraged to be Yangs, and Men are not encouraged to be Yins.

However, all human beings need both.

Dr. Neff wants to investigate how we balance these two energies.

Yin without Yang can be passive and complacent, while Yang without Yin can be hurtful and self righteous.

On what it means to be healthy:

“Something about balance and integration.. Accepting foibles of being human but also really doing what we can to help ourselves thrive, not excluding any aspect of ourselves from the whole, but also not getting off balance by prioritizes some over the others…

Sense of center, balance, authentic, being in the world, and that involves Loving, connected, presence”

Guest Info

Kristin Neff is currently an Associate Professor of Educational Psychology at the University of Texas at Austin. She is a pioneer in the field of self-compassion research, conducting the first empirical studies on self-compassion over a decade ago. In addition to writing numerous academic articles and book chapters on the topic, she is author of the book "Self-Compassion: The Proven Power of Being Kind to Yourself," released by William Morrow. In conjunction with her colleague Dr. Chris Germer, she has developed an empirically supported eight-week training program called Mindful Self-Compassion, which is taught by thousands of teachers worldwide, and the Mindful Self-Compassion Workbook is now available by Guilford.

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This is the million dollar question, and so many people come to me with the concern that they just don’t have the time.

Maybe you’ve heard this idea before: It’s not really about time, it’s about priority.

I really want to dig into that idea.

“You find time for the things you prioritize, and the things you don’t prioritize or that you don’t think really matter fall to the end of the list”

I want to dive into priorities, but I also want to honor where you are in this season of your life.

On mindset:

You can have all the tips and strategies, but if you’re not able to shift your mindset about how you’re thinking about wellness and health those strategies will get you nowhere.

What’s missing in wellness is this mindset piece.

Everyone wants to give you a plan or program, and if you’ve found yourself struggling to find success in them, chances are it’s mindset that’s missing.

Here are three ways that you can shift your mindset so that you can find time for wellness:

1 | Identify what it means to be healthy for you.

This is harder than it seems!

At the end of my interviews with guests on the Feel Good Effect, I ask my guest what health really means.

Think about what it really means to you.

Ask yourself:

How do you define health?

How do you want to feel?

“If we don’t know that that’s what we’re working for, it’s so easy to get off track and to feel completely lost and not know how to come back”.

2 | Know your why.

If we don’t know why we’re doing something, it’s very unlikely that we’ll be able to sustain it.

Why wellness? Why prioritize? Why make the tradeoff to make the space to take care of yourself?

I like to use “when I’m” statements to fill in the blanks:

When I’m physically well, I can…

When I’m emotionally well, I can…

When I’m mentally well, I can…

Consider how when you’re well, the things you can do for yourself, and the things you can do for other people.

When I’m physically well, I can do… for myself, and… for others.

When I’m emotionally well, I can do… for myself, and… for others.

When I’m mentally well, I can do… for myself, and… for others.

This helps create a bigger picture of what health means to you and feels like for you.

“Flipping the script on goal setting toward a feeling, toward a version and a life that you really want, brings so much more clarity and purpose, so that when it gets difficult in the daily grind to prioritize that time, you know why you’re doing it”

3 | Know your wellness personality barriers.

If you haven’t already, take the Wellness Personality Quiz here to figure out which wellness personality type you’re working with and what barriers you might come across.

The three high-level barriers that might come up are: perfectionism and all-or-nothing thinking, comparison and jumping from thing to thing, and guilt and overwhelm.

Chances are, you have a combo of these factors.

If you know the areas that you’re challenged by, you can really hone in on how to leverage them into strengths.

On wellness strategies:

If one of these resonates with you and you know you’re an obliger (from Gretchen Rubin’s four tendencies, listen to the episode to learn more), send this episode to a friend to have that accountability you know helps you.

Here are 9 strategies:

1 | Do an honest audit of your actual week.

Do an honest audit of your week, not the perfect week you wish you had, but your actual week.

Evaluate how you spend your time to look for pockets of 10 minutes.

Find a strategy that you can actually do for 7 days, and look for pockets of 10 minutes.

Maybe you can get up 10 minutes earlier, maybe it’s between activities, maybe you’re waiting in line or in traffic, or maybe it’s scrolling through a social media feed.

As you go through your day, just bring awareness to these pockets of time without judgement.

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Today’s guest, Robin Long is the founder of The Balanced Life + The Balanced Life Sisterhood. This episode of the Feel Good Effect dives into how to find time for exercise, talks about what balance means to Robin, a discusses a time when she felt like she didn't fit in and how she leveraged that into her business today, and gets real about the pelvic floor and ab separation.

The Secret to Finding Time for Exercise with Robin Long, The Balanced Life

Read on for more from Robin, and to listen to this episode of the Feel Good Effect podcast about how to find time for exercise and why it’s so important for avoiding burnout, and why we should speak up when we think differently than the people around us.

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Show Notes

Today’s guest is with Robin Long from The Balanced Life.

If you’re struggling with finding the time to exercise, or are just looking for a way to make it more enjoyable and sustainable, this episode is for you.

Robin is a certified pilates instructor and the creator of The Balanced Life, a website dedicated to helping women love their bodies.

The website has quick and effective pilates and barre workouts that can be done from home or on the road.

Robin is passionate about helping people transform their relationship with exercise and healthy living by choosing grace over guilt and finding a balance that feels like freedom.

When she’s not filming pilates workouts, Robin can be found chasing her 5 year old, 3 year old, and newborn twins.

Robin is really living the truth of finding a balance in motherhood and wellness.

This conversation covers how to find time and create space for exercise, what balance means to Robin, and a time when she felt like she didn't fit in and how she leveraged that into her business today.

We also get tactical about the pelvic floor and ab separation (which affect SO many people), and we get real about a struggle we are both facing right now.

This episode is brought to you by our Wellness Personality Guide-- so check that out on the Real Food Whole Life.

On The Balanced Life Sisterhood:

Robin has found that even though body-love and body-acceptance have become trendy, there is still a lot of messaging behind it that she struggles with.

She keeps in mind that her videos are watched in family homes and a lot of kids hear her message, so she wants to make sure that kids learn about health for the right reasons.

Robin started as a traditional pilates instructor teaching in-person classes, but quickly found that she wasn’t fitting in with the fitness industry.

People came to her for a flat tummy and toned body, but she found that what people really needed was to connect with their bodies and benefit from that healing power.

They would come in for the fitness, but they couldn’t understand why they felt so good after class: it was the mind-body connection.

She decided to start taking her message and perspective online.

She started by selling her workout videos to clients and family, and now her business is entirely online, The Balanced Life Sisterhood.

This is a community of women looking for a healthy, balanced relationship with health and wellness.

There is a focus on how we are living (on and off the mat), how we are talking to ourselves, and how we are being an example to others.

The Sisterhood is a lifestyle approach rooted in pilates.

On feeling “wrong”:

“Am I wrong, or am I in the wrong place?”

It is so valuable to have something different to offer or different to say-- someone else out there needs to hear it differently, too.

Robin used to teach in a high-end fitness center in the Bay-area with lots of money and high-achieving trainers and clients.

There was this drive to be very visually fit; she didn’t feel like she could connect with anyone.

But her classes were full with months-long waitlists.

Robin was doing something totally different: she wasn’t talking about looking good or losing weight.

She was helping people feel good in a different way that really resonated with people.

If you’re feeling like you have something different to say or offer, there are people out there that need to hear that.

You’ll stand out and find those people if you’re not afraid to share your message and your truth.

People want to see the real journey, not the airbrushed journey we sometimes want to put out there.

On talking about body positivity without talking about our bodies:

By calling attention to body positivity, we are still talking about how our bodies look.

The body positive movement is incredible, but is there a way to have the conversation without being so hyper-focused on how we look from the outside?

Even by sharing acceptance and body love or #fitspo (fitness inspiration), attention is still being called to how our bodies look.

As women in the health/fitness industry, Robyn and Robin know how to make that viral post, whether it be posting a curvy body or stretch marks.

But they want to be truthful with their communities and thoughtfully share their messages.

On grace over guilt:

Grace over guilt is a more gentle and self-compassionate approach to wellness.

Robin noticed that she often used to make decisions based on guilt: she would go to the gym because she felt guilty for eating a certain way.

That punishment mindset creates a negative relationship with exercise.

It was a cycle of guilt: punishing herself with exercise, rewarding herself with food, punishing herself for eating that rewarded food with exercise, etc.

And it sounds pretty extreme, but if you dig a little deeper you might notice that a lot of our relationships with exercise and food are bathed in guilt.

It’s an unhappy way to live.

“Instead of wasting time and mental energy feeling guilty for what you did yesterday, just extend some grace to yourself… and pick back up today”.

Robyn has found in her research that one of the number one factors in sustainable, long-term change is self-compassion: the ability to be with yourself when you don’t live up to your expectations, and not confusing perfection with consistency.

On finding the time for self-care + exercise:

It’s not easy-- it takes work and attention.

If you’re busy, self-care and exercise are often going to be the first things to go.

But, there is real burnout that can happen.

“Your body will no longer support you if you do not take time to take care of yourself”.

Robin sees it in so many women that come to her, and she emphasizes getting rid of the all-or-nothing mentality.

To combat that, Robin provides short, effective workouts that can fit into most busy schedules (even in 10 minutes!).

She incorporates a baby-steps approach to breaking the association that exercise always has to be an hour or has to result in lots of sweating.

If you haven’t been doing anything physical in a while, it can be really hard to get started and ignore negative self-talk.

When you first start, you have to give yourself room to be where you are.

Remember: If it’s hard, you’re getting stronger.

Finding a community of authentic people can really help, too.

When you’re in a community, like the Sisterhood, you’ll see that other people are struggling too.

The Balanced Life Sisterhood has a group of 55+ as well, who are focused on Robin’s message of mind-body wellness and non-vanity motivations.

On pilates, the pelvic floor and ab separation:

Pilates provides a way to build a functional strong core.

A common misconception is that your core is just your abs.

All the ab muscles are a part of your core, but so is the pelvic floor.’

Some of the things pilates addresses are two neglected parts of your core:

1| Pelvic floor: related to both people who have and have not had a baby!

It’s a muscles just like any other muscle, and it should be considered anytime you’re thinking about going back to exercising.

2 | Ab separation: a separation down the middle of your abs from childbirth.

After having a baby, it is so important to check for this before jumping back into exercise.

If this isn’t addressed, there won’t be any progress.

On what her life looks life now:

Robin just had twins and is totally embracing postpartum life.

She’s finding her new balance, easing back into work and working out, and figuring out what it looks like to have 2 kids and 2 babies.

It’s about finding little ways to work wellness and fitness into her current season, remembering that this isn't forever.

Guest Information

Robin Long is a certified Pilates instructor and creator of The Balanced Life, a website dedicated to helping women love their bodies.

The Balanced Life provides quick, yet effective, online Pilates & barre workouts that can be done from home or on the road and serves tens of thousands of women all over the world.

Robin is passionate about helping women transform their relationship with exercise and healthy living by choosing “grace over guilt” and finding a balance that feels like FREEDOM.

When Robin's not filming Pilates workouts on the beach, she can be found chasing her 5-year-old daughter and 3-year-old son, snuggling her newborn twins, relaxing on the beach, and seeking out the best almond milk latte in town.

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Read on to learn about how to implement a 5 Minute Morning, how it might help you, and to listen to this episode of the Feel Good Effect podcast about starting your day refreshed, revived, and ready to thrive.

The recipes included are brand new (not even on the blog), gluten-free, dairy-free, and incredibly simple.

On the 5 Minute Morning:

The 5 Minute Morning is about creating space to connect with yourself, refill your cup, and focus on what really matters.

It’s to help you start your day refreshed, revived, and ready for what’s next.

Here’s a simple truth: taking time out for self care is not about bubble baths or spa days.

It’s about carving out a few minutes to cultivate what matters most, tune in, take care, and set yourself up for success.

It’s about letting go of the guilt, getting into gentle, and creating space for wellness.

There have a been a couple times in my life where I really had to reset and focus on wellness.

I realized that there is more to wellness than working out and restricting my diet, because at the end of the day, I was still exhausted and felt depleted.

What I did was implement what is now my 5 Minute Morning.

It gave me space and time, first thing in the morning, to ground down, connect with myself, and focus on what was really going on.

Think about your day: many of us are rushing from thing to thing, with little space for stillness.

That was what I needed, stillness, so I made space for it.

Stillness allowed me the space to connect and reflecting on the choices I was making: “is this the life I want to build?”.

“Don’t build a castle that you don’t want to live in…

I realized that all of this striving, and pushing and obsessiveness about exercise and eating was maybe getting me results in how my body looked, but it wasn’t the castle I wanted to live in; it’s not the life I wanted to have”

For long term wellness, we need to make sure we are coming from a place of nurturing and sustainability.

This 5 Minute Morning is about creating a little time and space when you start your day to:

1 | Be still enough to connect with what’s going on.

2 | Refill your cup so you have something to give today.

My mornings as a mama are not calm (and I only have one kid..), plus, add in a long commute, and my started in this stress, automatic fight-or-flight loop.

During this time, I would find myself later in the day seeking comfort in sugars and caffeine.

What it comes down to is asking: how can we address how to start our day so there is less mess later on?

By creating that space in the morning, I got some perspective on what I was reaching for to solve the problems in the immediate, and how that was actually causing me more challenges throughout the day.

On the 5 Steps for the 5 Minute Morning:

This 5 Minute Morning is not about a quick fix.

This is about ditching the all-or-nothing mindset about self-care, and about letting go of the idea of having an extra hour.

5 minutes is realistic.

With that, you’re really able to give yourself a sustainable practice.

It’s not about adding time, it’s about having consistency.

1 | Know you’re why.

For a true reset, you need to be connecting with a sense of purpose.

That clarity is what will help you come back and reset if you feel yourself getting off track.

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Jessica Turner is a working mother who wants you to know that even when you’re overwhelmed by your to-do’s and caring for your family, you can find pockets of time throughout your day, evaluate what is satisfying for you, and make more space for self-care.

Read on for more from Jessica, and to listen to her interview on the Feel Good Effect Podcast.

How to Overcome the Hustle When You're Feeling Stretched Too Thin, with Jessica Turner

Read on for more from Jessica, and to listen to this episode of the Feel Good Effect podcast about how to find time for what satisfies you and why it’s so important to take care of yourself.

Scroll down to listen.

Show Notes

She values space for talking to working moms, which is reflected in her book’s subtitle: “How Working Moms can Lose the Guilt, Work Smarter, and Thrive”

Three years ago, Jessica’s other book, “The Fringe Hours: Making Time for You”, was released.

This book featured the idea of finding pockets of time in our daily lives that are often wasted or missed.

It just made sense to move next onto working motherhood.

For this idea, Jessica surveyed 2,000 working moms, asking about their struggles.

She found that there were a lot of similar struggles working moms were having, including: home management, time for marriage, work boundaries, time for self care, parenting well, etc.

With that in mind, Jessica piloted an incredibly successful online course that led her to continue researching the subject.

With all this success in the field, she was asked why she wasn’t writing full time.

Her thought was that it made sense to write about what she was experiencing: working a full time job, being a mom, and writing this book.

There is an overly glorified idea that working for yourself, means less stress, but there are a new set of issues that come with not being in an office.

On “The Fringe Hours”:

When discussing her research findings with others, Jessica found that it was eye opening for women to hear that on average, we wait about 45-60 min a day.

On top of that, the number one thing women reported wanting to do more of, if they had more free time, was to read.

And it’s so easy to read while waiting!

It’s a great example to bring to women, and one of the first steps to fixing this discrepancy is time tracking for a full week.

Track how long it takes to complete all of your tasks and activities throughout the day and recognize where there are pockets of time, when there are things you can say no to, or times you can block out in advance to make room for self-care.

Self care is so important!

And women tend to think that it's selfish to make room for that time, but consider how you model that to your kids.

On defining ‘balance’:

“It’s not about balance, it’s about satisfaction”

It's not about balancing your life, rather, it's about how satisfied you are with those different areas of your life.

Instead of thinking about categorizing by work + everything else, think about improving the different areas in your life that you are unsatisfied with.

On taking inventory:

If you’re feeling stretched too thin, step one to a resolution is time tracking.

Figure out where you are draining time, what is satisfying, what isn’t satisfying and you want to change, and what work and home look like.

In her survey, Jessica found that 80% of those moms felt like managing their home was a struggle.

Instead of stressing about home management as a whole, think about it and break it down: what part of home management is the struggle? What needs to change?

Use time tracking to figure out exactly how much time is being spent in the subcategories of home management, such as grocery shopping, cleaning up, etc.

From readers so far, people have really resonated with the idea that you don't have to be the perfect mom.

They came away from the book with the mindset that they are the perfect mom for themselves.

Each chapter ends with a space for reflection to tell your own story.

It's important to recognize that this is a personal journey that is different for everyone.

It's overwhelming trying to be a perfect mom, the tactics Jessica writes about help combat that mindset.

On the mental load:

Mental load describes the idea of noticing the silent tasks that need to be done, that no one else seems to notice.

Once you notice it’s added stress, you can actually change it and ask for help.

Speak up!

And acknowledge how much goes on in a day, giving yourself that credit, without comparing yourself to others.

“I want each of us to speak truth to ourselves, rather than lies that nobody has actually told us how we should live”

It’s so easy to look at someone else’s life and think that they’ve got it all together, asking “well why can't I have it together like this?” but you also have to ask, “does it make me happy, in the same way that it makes them?”

“Trade comparison for celebration”

On core values:

Being able to celebrate what others are doing, while having compassion for yourself is driven by your values.

It’s easy to say, “these are my values”, but when you look at what someone spends their time on, you have some insight into what they actually value.

If you notice that what you spend your time on doesn't align with your values, its time for something to change.

On defining what you need to do versus want to do:

Flip the narrative!

What do you really need to do versus what is nice to do

What are you saying yes to that you really should be saying “no” to?

If it's not a heck yes, it’s a no.

Try saying “no” just once, and notice how good it feels to have that extra time to do something that really satisfies you.

It might disappoint other people, but sometimes saying “no” is protecting your boundaries.

Its okay to say “no” if its not going to work for you: hold your ground.

On self-care:

Is guilt keeping you from practicing self care?

“You are going to be the best version of yourself if you take care of yourself”.

There will always be a choice to take care of what you need now, or to wait until it’s more convenient.

And self-care doesn’t have to mean manicures and bubble baths, rather, it can be eating healthy and actually going to the doctor when you need to instead of putting it off.

We take care of everyone else, but would you let someone you care about suffer until they decided it was more convenient?

Do what you need to do to thrive!

On the book:

Here are the major takeaways from Jessica’s book for working moms: how to work and parent guilt-free, establishing boundaries with work, home management, investing in your marriage and other relationships in your life, making time for self-care, and feelings that come with being stretched too thin.

One big take away from Jessica after writing the book:

“You are a great mom”.

Women tend to feel like they are failing because they are stretched too thin.

Working moms are strong + brave, and they are doing a great job.

Yes, there are areas for improvement, but that doesn’t change the fact that you are already a great mom.

Jessica, on what it really means to be healthy:

“I think it really is important that you are cognizant of all of your needs and that you're taking care of yourself. I think that if you are able to invest in yourself, you are going to be the healthiest, happiest person you can be”.

If you loved today’s episode be sure to leave a rating and review on Apple Podcasts so we can keep bringing you more content like this! Share the show on Instagram, tagging @realfoodwholelife so that we can connect and I can highlight listeners on my feed.

Resources

Guest Information

Jessica N. Turner is the author of Stretched Too Thin and The Fringe Hours. She is also an award-winning marketing executive and the founder of the popular lifestyle blog The Mom Creative (www.themomcreative.com). Additionally, she is a writer for the Today Parenting Team and DaySpring's (in)courage, an advocate for World Vision, a regular speaker at events nationwide. She and her husband, Matthew live with their three children in Nashville, Tennessee.

Check out my guide on how to simplify and create easy minimalism around food.

Be sure to share a screenshot if you’re listening on social media, and tag @realfoodwholelife so I can connect with you!

I recently was asked a question on Instagram: “how do I get back on track when I’ve let my wellness routine slip?"

I could spend so much time answering this question!

I’ve had my own rough patches, especially after college and after having my daughter, so I really resonated with this struggle.

Even now, I find myself letting things slip from time to time, and I just need to reset and start fresh.

Through my own trial and error and my coaching experience, I’ve come up with a set of strategies, habits, and mindset hacks to smooth out the process of getting back into that lost routine.

Lately, on my website and Instagram, I’ve been talking a lot about letting go of “all or nothing” thinking.

Our brains are actually wired for this type of thinking, and when we add in external messages about how we should be, it’s easy to give into this “all or nothing” thinking.

This mentality will only keep you stuck.

There are two types of reasons you may have let your wellness routine slip:

First, are long term reasons, including reasons such as kids, job, school, relationship change, illness, or caring giving.

In these moments, it’s so important to recognize that it’s normal for wellness to slip.

“It’s not a matter of beating yourself up and saying ‘what is wrong with me, why can't I do it all?’, it's about having so much compassion and saying ‘this is a really difficult time- how can I be in this space? How can I be in this experience?’ and find ways back to wellness”

The other time things can slip are short term reasons like vacations, holidays, or drinking.

These short term slips tend to be compounding, in that while you might get caught up in a shame spiral, you also might feel physically badly.

Here are 5 ways to get back on track:

1 | Baby steps.

Start small and build momentum.

There is a ton of research about building momentum by starting small.

When you feel yourself slipping, ask yourself: “what are the baby steps here?”

And acknowledge that baby steps count!

You’re building a runway and working up to something big.

2 | Add.

When we talk about wellness, we tend to think about all the things we shouldn’t do.

Instead, I like to flip the script and think about what we can add, instead of taking away.

Here are the 5 things you should add:

a. More real food: anything with 5 ingredients or less in its most whole form.

When it comes to wellness, we tend to spend time thinking about where we have messed up in the past and where we want to be in the future.

“All of that past or future thinking takes us out of this moment… and this moment right now, this is everything... because the past doesn't exist anymore, it’s over, it's done, and the future hasn't happened yet”

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If you loved today’s episode be sure to leave a rating and review on Apple Podcasts so we can keep bringing you more content like this! Share the show on Instagram, tagging @realfoodwholelife so we can connect and I can highlight you on my feed.

Sarah Adler is an entrepreneur and real food expert, who wants you to know that you can benefit from a real food diet with patience and careful attention.

Read on for more from Sarah, and to listen to this episode of the Feel Good Effect podcast about why real food is better than a pre-planned diet, and why it's so important to have a good relationship with food.

How to Thrive with Real Food (and Ditch the Calorie Struggle for Good)

In this week's episode we chat with Sarah Adler, founder of Simply Real Health, about why real food works for everyone and how to have a good relationship with food. She walks us through how to know your body and how to make the shift.

Listen Now!

Show Notes

As a child she was obsessed with healthy eating, growing up in a healthy home where healthy eating was talked about frequently and positively.

She became obsessed with it as she went into middle and high school, reading nutrition textbooks and diet books for fun, working out all the time; she was actively trying to be healthy but had no stop button.

In her reading, however, she found that there are endless things to learn about health and wellness, many of which conflict with each other.

She tested out various diets, and as she got older, found herself becoming anxious about going out or to social events where her “healthy foods” might be scarce.

“It never turned into an eating disorder, but it was a very disordered way of looking at food.”

After finding herself on a trip to Italy, she noticed that although her “healthy snacks” weren’t as accessible abroad, the Italian women she observed were really present, happy, and fully engaged with the people they were with.

She noticed that they were calm around their food, even though it wasn’t the healthy eating she was used to.

There was no worry about what workout would need to follow, no picking at the meal, no punishing themselves.

This was Sarah’s turning point:

“Everything that I had learned up until that point, everything that I had been pouring over and learning over these books and theories and diets… that I realized that none of that mattered if you didn’t have a good relationship to food as well”.

This turning point led to a changed relationship to food; she began asking herself:

Is it a real food?

Is it one ingredient?

Is it something that has existed for thousands of years?

If so, then it’s real food and my body can deal with it better.

Sarah went from viewing healthy food as diet food to healthy food being real food.

On a relationship with food:

Healthy eating is not always about focusing on the what to eat (eat this, don’t eat that), but the healthy relationship with food (joy, micro mindfulness).

Food is so much a part of our daily lives, culture, and celebration.

We tend to learn about foods in “yes foods” and “no foods”, “eat this” but “don’t eat that”, try this fad“, etc.

But the way food is so integrated into our lives, something will always come up (events, celebrations, gatherings…)

“Trying to live healthy… on a diet is black and white, but real life is the land of grey”

Our relationship to food tends to have a cycle of extremes:

When we diet and feel really good, we might feel like it’s okay to indulge a little.

When we indulge too much and start to slack, we begin to feel badly and start to diet again.

What to do: find a middle ground that allows you to feel good and enjoy meaningful things.

How to do it: get rid of clutter! Declutter by asking yourself…

What do you get the most enjoyment from?

What do you not care about?

On what’s “right” and real food:

Many have expressed feeling overwhelmed by all the diet options to integrate into healthy eating, struggling to find what’s “right” among all the conflicting information available.

What does matter: are these foods my body will know how to process and use?

Be aware of what you eat and how it makes you feel, and then, move into eating what brings you joy and what makes you feel good.

Consider what you’re eating and when you’re eating it; notice how the combination affects you.

This transition takes time- expect to give yourself a week before seeing results.

Note: “Transitioning to real food and a real food lifestyle and a sustainable lifestyle is not the quick fix... it is taking a little more time on purpose because the changes that are happening are hopefully going to be ones that stick with you for a really long time”

On finding what works for you:

Be aware that everyone has individual differences.

Diet trends may be a good fit for some people, but just because it worked for someone else (think instagram influencers), it doesn’t necessarily mean it will be as effective for another person.

Sarah’s experience on finding what worked for her: she cut out gluten entirely and after three months noticed significant results.

“Our bodies are always tending towards health… they will tell us when things are off”.

She noticed that her body reacted negatively to gluten and integrated a gluten-free diet into her life.

However, she is still aware of what is naturally gluten-free real food versus what is gluten-free and heavily processed with a list of ingredients.

Test and experiment what works for you to understand it.

Be a good partner to your body.

Sarah’s advice: learn about what real food is and what it’s not, develop a filter to tell what is real food, learn the intricate details of it.

Find Sarah’s resources below.

What’s next: cookbook two is in the works

**If you love Real Food Whole Life, you’ll love Simply Real Health

On what it really means to be healthy:

“Being healthy means in-tune with yourself, of who you are, of who you want to be, of how you thrive best, of the things that you want to create in your life.

I think that it requires being grounded and calm and really present in who you are and what you’re doing”

Guest Information

Sarah Adler is a lady-boss entrepreneur of Simply Real Health: a healthy lifestyle company, food blog, cookbook and brand on a serious mission to help busy people live healthier and more inspired lives, made simple.

Simple as in—philosophy (real food), recipes (all with 5 ingredients or less, 10-15 minutes or less) and easy (totally doable in real life). All with the mission of helping people creating better relationships to food, an #antidiet life that lasts, and a more joyful, fulfilling life because of it.